PUNE, February 14, 2026 — In a major push toward modernization and strategic autonomy, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, delivered the keynote address at the “JAI Se Vijai” seminar hosted by the Indian Army’s Southern Command.
The CDS articulated a visionary framework for the military, identifying the three pillars of JAI—Jointness, Aatmanirbharta (Self-Reliance), and Innovation—as the essential pathways to ensuring assured victory for a future-ready fighting force.
General Chauhan emphasized that as the nature of warfare evolves, the Indian Armed Forces must accelerate their absorption of cutting-edge technologies and undergo profound institutional transformations to remain operationally relevant across the full spectrum of modern conflict.
The seminar served as a critical platform for high-level deliberations on navigating emerging multi-domain challenges, ranging from traditional battlefield scenarios to cyber and space warfare. By focusing on Integration and self-reliant capability building, the CDS underscored the necessity of moving away from “siloed” operations toward a unified, tri-service approach.
The event reinforced a shared commitment among the military leadership to pursue an innovation-led readiness strategy, ensuring that the Armed Forces are not only equipped with indigenous platforms but are also tactically prepared to prosecute operations decisively in any high-intensity environment.
