An experiment in Dyarchy and it's failure continues....

Another work which took much of my time in those days was to persuade India to lend as much military aid to the State as possible to free it from Pakistani raiders and the Pak army. The problem was to save a number of towns; Kotli, Mirpur, Rajori, Bhimber among them. The requests of the Army Commander to the army headquarters at Delhi evoked little response. I decided on direct approach at Delhi and took Sheikh Abdulla with me. We requested the Prime Minister of India to give us arms and ammunition, four battalions of infantry, an armoured unit and a few tanks. The Prime Minister sent for the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the General Staff. One of them came to Pandit Nehru’s house after dinner and we sat in conference for three hours. The Chief said that the arms needed by us could not be spared, and the battalions we needed were busy elsewhere in the work of evacuation.

We were every disappointed with the result of this conference. I continued, however, sitting Dharna at the Prime Minister’s house and eventually succeeded in getting a Gorkha battalion flown to Jammu and another battalion sent there by road. These two battalions supplemented the armed forces in Jammu.

Under Brigadier Pranjpay, they were able to get to Kotli and evacuate the people and the beleagured army unit under Colonel Baldev Singh, who had remained with the besieged citizens for over two months. They, however, were not able to hold the town of Kotli which was abandoned to become a part of Pakistan-held
Kashmir.