Ashok Mehta.

Phone calls last week from friends -including a former diplomat and an erstwhile minister –king ‘what is wrong with your Army chief’ and the Amul ad (“Adaulat ka mamla? Don’t sena to it”) briefly encapsulate the self-inflicted discomfiture of Gen VK Singh. The disclosure of an attempted bribe and the inexplicable leak of a classified letter written by Gen Singh to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about critical deficiencies in army equipment show holes in operational preparedness at one level and on another, the pathetic state of relations between Gen Singh, defence minister A K Antony and the ministry of defence (MoD).

Never has a serving army chief taken his government to court; and later made startling disclosures through the media, perfectly timed to embarrass it with Parliament in session and a BRICS summit under way. Antony comes out of this certainly as probity personified but also singularly lacking in managing Gen Singh, his ministry and the modernization of the armed forces- what with bragging on the floor of the House, his penchant for cancelling contracts and blacklisting arms companies.

This year alone the Army and Air Force returned unspent nearly Rs 4000 crore from their capital accounts, despite streamlined defence procurement procedures that have been revised half a dozen times since 2003. This is a betrayal of the promise made by Prime Minister Singh during his New Year message that he would personally ensure the modernization of the armed forces.

The central figure of this Greek tragedy is inevitably Gen Singh who has allowed serious issues connected with the sword arm of the state to virtually become a trial by media, which rocked both Houses of Parliament, culminating in some members demanding his resignation. It is no secret that Gen Singh is incensed over losing the battle about his age. He has spoken to the media, complaining about the Supreme Court verdict saying his date of birth has to be reconciled. He feels he is being marginalized because he was targeting corruption and trying to improve the internal health of the Army in organizational interest.

What he does not explain is some of the improprieties he committed while holding the sacred office of the COAS: like taking the government to court and not resigning after losing the case. With two months left before demitting office, Gen Singh has launched a riposte to salvage his image. That in doing so he has exposed the cracks and warts in the system is laudable. But the modus operandi is highly suspect and objectionable.

Take the alleged bribery case. For two years after the incident – which Gen Singh ostensibly audiotaped – he sat over it. Worse, he declined to proceed against the offending officer, Lt Gen Tejinder Singh despite Antony’s prodding, till last week. This was followed by the mysterious leak of a confidential letter from him to the Prime Minister highlighting critical shortages in the army. The very latest target is a serving lieutenant general on a complaint of May 2011.

Lt Gen Tejinder Singh has taken Gen VK Singh to court for libel along with the vice chief, chief of military intelligence and senior officers of the public information department. You have the sorry spectacle of an enquiry where, for the first time in history, a serving chief, defence minister and MoD officials will be quizzed by the CBI. You cannot have the hierarchy of the second largest army which is required to fight a two-front war, under investigation. This is a bizarre situation in which the image of the Army, office of the COAS and national security have been directly imperiled.

The Prime Minister must immediately rein in Gen Singh. A ministerial task force must be constituted to examine why army operational preparedness has dipped so low and why civil-military relations have reached a nadir. It must also enquire why army is unable to spend its modernization budget in full. This year alone it returned unspent Rs 3000 crore.

Gen Singh has clearly shifted the focus of the debate from himself to issues of corruption and debilitating delays in modernization. I urge Gen Singh to stop the sequential disclosures in organizational interest and ride out into the sunset.

The author is a retired major general and founding member of the Defence Planning Staff.

-via The Times of India.

Now where possibly can I get one? A weapon of mass destruction, I mean. How about the Army people? I remember biting an Army man once. He had threatened to shoot my brains out with his handheld gun! Brrrrr…. That was scary! But our Army Chief says the Indian Army doesn’t have enough weapons, and the ones that they have are all obsolete. Holy mother of Chand uncle! Where are the weapons, then?

I have a strong feeling that Chand uncle has an entire catalogue of weapons, hidden somewhere inside his cupboard. It’s called the Kingfisher calendar. I guess that is the only catalogue of highly destructive weapons which is available legally. Now considering that Kingfisher Airlines too has to its credit an entire fleet of such bombshells, does that mean that Vijay Mallya deals in heavy arms and ammunitions? Come on! Quick! We need to pass this information to the Defense Ministry. I’m sure they would be happy to invest in weapons as these. The day that happens, my dear Makhu (My girlfriend) will have a government job. How? Arre she herself is no less than a bombshell na.

I must say all this weapon talk is making me feel like an agent. Not Agent Vinod silly, a secret agent. Agent Vinod is such a flop movie. And yeah, now when I know the army does not have enough weapons, I guess I can go back and avenge the army guy who had pointed his gun at me. I guess every mosquito has his day, eh?

By Tripti Varma

Bharat Karnad.

It is hard to say when it is that the military stopped being the paragon of propriety in a social milieu increasingly bereft of basic values that people once saw reflected in the men in olive green (or in Air Force blue and Navy white), such as honour and honesty. There are still many officers of the old school for whom military is a career, yes, but also an orderly world of do’s and don’ts and simple pleasures and simpler certainties. There have been service chiefs who after demitting office rode bicycles because that’s all they could afford (Adm. R.L. Periera), or repaired without fuss to living in small, cramped apartments because anything grander their pensions wouldn’t allow (Adm. Vishnu Bhagwat). But the officer cohorts that produced a Periera or a Bhagwat also threw up service chiefs — no names, please, they have law on their side! — verily Kubla Khans who have built pleasure domes, allegedly on a service chief’s salary and pension.

The Chief of Army Staff, Gen. V.K. Singh, has blown the lid off the comfortable milieu senior military brass cocoon themselves in, where every whim quite literally is a command, revealing just how dirty military life has become, how much corruption has seeped into and become part of the cantonment life. Of course, there were always officers from the support arms in the Army — the service corps and ordnance corps — who were known for accumulating wealth at the public exchequer’s expense. Gen. Singh actually hinted at a conspiracy of Rs. 14 crores being dangled as bait by retired officers he identifies as “the Adarsh lobby” in the hopes of implicating him in a bribery scandal. What the Army Chief’s revelations have done is loosened the dirt lining the military acquisitions system, permitting the muck and the scum to float to the top. Now all the rumours one heard about payouts to senior military officers over the years can be freely aired.

Over time, one has heard hearsay accounts, for instance, of a system of “under the table” payments by consortia of contractors and victual suppliers to officers assuming the highest commands. Thus, an appointee to an Army commander’s post was richer, one was told a decade back, by `3-4 crores. Today the sum may be a multiple of this figure. It’s not clear, however, whether this is a one-time booty or recurring prize-money. The trouble is these sorts of payoffs have come to be viewed by many in Army circles as perquisites of the job. In like vein, pelf at lower level is tolerated as an “equalisation” measure relative to politicians and civil servants who routinely siphon off public funds.
The rot is wide and deep and spreading fast. What Gen. Singh has put his finger on are the vendors, mostly foreign, of weapon systems, spares and service support either directly or through Defence Public Sector factories, involved in assembling imported systems or licensed production, who prop up this system of corruption. With the expenditure on acquisitions rocketing, so have the competitive stakes for foreign Companies, DPSUs (Defence Public Sector Undertaking), and Indian private sector firms entering the lucrative defence business. Consequently, more and more officers up and down the military acquisitions line — in the weapons and quality control directorates, units tasked with testing and short-listing, and in price negotiation committees — are tempted at every turn, and many succumb.

The Congress government’s initial response was remarkable for its insouciance and near indifference — the Army Chief should have lodged an FIR. Par for the course, one supposes, for a political party that during its long years in office first perfected and then institutionalised corruption. Defence minister A.K. Antony defended himself in Parliament saying Gen. Singh informed him about the attempted bribery over 16 months ago all right but was remiss in not following up with a written complaint without which, the minister lamented, he couldn’t proceed. Why does that ring false? For one thing because Mr Antony has turned his programme to root out corruption into a fetish, and someone so concerned with cleansing his ministry surely should not have stood on formalities. In the event, he neither reminded the Army Chief to send his charge in writing nor, in the interim, ordered an investigation, which he could have, and should have, done. Instead, he waited until now when the story broke and the leads may have gone cold, to bring the CBI into the picture. Was this Mr Antony’s Plan B if all this ever came to light?

In the wake of a tsunami of wrongdoing in the military, it is time to initiate two major reforms before it is too late. One is to institute “deep selection” of service chiefs — that is, all lieutenant general-rank officers completing two years in that rank be eligible for consideration. This widening of the selection pool will at once weed out those who have advanced in their careers with only seniority to recommend them, leading to just too many duds as service chiefs for it to be a coincidence. This will also incentivise an entire cohort to strengthen their records with genuine achievements rather than coasting in their last few tenures, and prevent “succession planning” by unscrupulous former Army Chiefs as has happened in the case of the designated successor to Gen. Singh. The other measure is to routinely do deep and thorough background checks of not just the candidates for appointments to corps commander level up, but also their immediate families. It will prevent persons from becoming Army Chiefs, like the one who not too long ago held this post and was known for shedding tears usually for the camera, adorning his golf cart with the four stars of his rank, and deploying a large contingent of soldiers from his parent infantry unit at his residence to help run his wife’s textile fashions and export business. With such a man in the chief’s saddle, what message would have been conveyed to military officers except “misuse your position to the max”?

The writer is a professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

-via The Asian Age.

The Army Chief reveled this during an interview with Bakchod Khabar. The CID is investigating all the postmen through whose hands the postcard had passed. The report also brings to light the nexus between the postal department and the media.

General Singh has said that he had done it in the interest of the nation. “No one cares to even have a look at postcards anymore. So since it was an important letter, I thought a postcard would avoid any eyeballs and would reach the recipient safely.”

On being reminded by a Bakchod Khabar reporter that he had the secure email facility at his disposal, General Singh said, “I was born in 1950, oops 1951. I still prefer postcards to email, gmail or female when it comes to communicating secure information.”

Defence Minister AK Antony has reacted strongly to this disclosure. “Whether postcard or email is not the issue. The problem is that the contents of the letter demanded urgency and that is where sending the information through postcard becomes a problem.”

But the General has not taken very kindly to the criticism. “What urgency is he talking about? The problems mentioned in the letter have existed ever since the Indian Army has been formed. I was just trying to impress the Prime Minister.”

There is some good news for the General though. He has found support on social networking sites for reviving the trend of postcards. A Facebook page has been created demanding the issuance of a postal stamp to commemorate his efforts. Our sources say that the page already has more than 24000 likes, most of who have never written a letter on a postcard.

Buoyed by the support, VK Singh got carried away and revealed that he had also drawn a Mickey Mouse at the back of the postcard to amuse the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was dumbstruck on knowing about the drawing.

Note: This news story has got nothing to do with reality. This is just a figment of my imagination. Laugh and let laugh.

Sandeep Phukan.

Defence Minister AK Antony today told Parliament that the Army chief refused to take action after being offered a Rs. 14-crore bribe in 2010. “I was shocked. I told him to take action, but he said ‘I refuse to pursue the matter’,” the minister said.

The minister also said that the Army chief, General VK Singh, had told him that the lobbyist who offered him the kickback was Tejinder Singh, who had retired as Lieutenant-General and was not in service when he allegedly offered the chief the money. In an interview to NDTV yesterday, the retired officer said he has never offered a bribe to the Army chief. Speaking to NDTV, Mr Singh said today that he had no animosity toward the Army chief but his lawyers have filed a defamation suit against General Singh.

A CBI inquiry was ordered yesterday by the Defence Minister after General Singh went public with media interviews about the bribe that was offered to him. The CBI investigation will swing into operation after General Singh provides a written account of what happened. Explaining why he did not commission an inquiry earlier, Mr Antony told Parliament that he had not received a written complaint from the chief.

Mr Antony’s remarks push the ball back into the chief’s court and provide the latest expression to the strained relationship between the Defence Ministry and the Army chief. Yesterday, General Singh said that after he was visited in his office by a retired officer and offered a kickback to clear the purchase of 600 “sub-standard trucks,” he had alerted the minister. Both the Congress and the BJP have said he should have filed a police case against the lobbyist for attempting to bribe a government servant.

“I will go to any extent to investigate the Army chief’s allegations… all my life, I have fought against corruption” said Mr Antony, saying that he follows up even on anonymous letters that allege graft. He said he is ready to cancel any contract tainted by corruption. The BJP’s Arun Jaitley responded in Parliament by saying that his party is willing to work with the government to “cleanse corruption” but he also said that it is the government’s job to distinguish between frivolous and substantive charges. “There is eventually civilian control of armed forces…issues that should be settled in closed doors are becoming a public debate which in case of armed forces should be avoided,” said Mr Jaitley. He added that the government and the Army chief “should not have put blinkers on their eyes. This is learning to live with corruption,” he said.

Mr Antony’s comments today expose the latest installment of the trust deficit between the Army chief and the Defence Ministry. Their relationship was heavily frayed by a year-long battle over General Singh’s age, which culminated with the with the chief taking the government to court in January to accept his claim that he was born in 1951 and not 1950, which is his year of birth according to the government. The issue could have affected when he would have to retire. The General withdrew his petition after Supreme Court judges suggested they would not be able to rule in his favour. General Singh will step down at the end of May.

The Army in a press release earlier this month blamed Lt General (retired) Tejinder Singh for offering bribes on behalf of Tatra and Vectra, which provides trucks to the Army via a government-owned company called Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML).

General Singh said in an interview yesterday that Rs. 14 crore was offered to him to clear the purchase of 600 “sub-standard” Tatra trucks. At the time, he said, 7000 trucks were already in use by the Army. But the Defence Ministry says that the Army has never complained about the performance of Tatra’s heavy vehicles.

-via NDTV

The Army Chief, General V.K. Singh has delivered yet another shocker. He has alleged that an equipment lobbyist offered him a bribe of Rs. 14 crore, which he reported to Union Defence Minister AK Antony. In a recent interview to a national daily, General Singh spoke on a variety of issues, including the controversy surrounding his date of birth and the “shocking” state of affairs in the Army which had allowed the Chief to be offered a bribe. The General said the lobbyist offered him the bribe in order to have a tranche of 600 sub-standard vehicles of a particular make cleared for purchase.

Gen VK Singh

Army chief Gen VK Singh, whose date of birth was mired in a huge controversy, has alleged that a “lot of money” was spent by people within the force to get a “false” birth certificate and tarnish his image as he had stopped their wrongdoings.

He said he had evidence that people within the Army were behind the “derogatory and completely fake” stories against him and action was being taken against them.

“A lot of people went on a drive to tarnish my image because they were not happy with the cleansing action I had taken. You will be suprised to know the amount of money which was spent to get the false certificate about by date of birth,” Gen Singh told ‘The Week’ magazine.

Asked who was spending the money to defame him, he responded, “There were a large number of people. A lot of money was given to a lot of people to do stories against me.

The stories were derogatory and completely fake.” When pointed out that one retired Lt General has already been accused of plotting against him, he said, “He was not the only one. We have identified a number of people.”

He said, “We have evidence of how documents were leaked and how much money was given” and that they were within the Army.

Queried whether he was surprised that serving officers were working against him, the Army Chief said, “In a large organisation like ours, you will always have people who feel left out. There were people who were doing wrong things but after we stopped those things, they turned against me.”

“We have evidence and necessary action is being taken,” Gen Singh said, adding, “If someone has betrayed the Army, there will be punishment. This is the rule of the Army.”

Gen Singh was mired in a huge controversy over his date of birth. The Army’s two branches — Adjutant General Branch and Military Secretary Branch — had two sets of dates of his birth — one having May 10, 1951 and another May 10, 1950.

He always maintained that his actual year of birth was 1951, which would give him nine-month extension from May-end this year, and dragged the government to the Supreme Court on this. However, he lost the legal battle there and will hence retire in May.

Asked about his relationship with Defence Minister AK Antony, the Army chief said, “He was always good to me” and “there has never been a single difference” between them.

“I was plain-spoken with him and he appreciated that,” Gen Singh said.

Whether that relationship was good despite the bugging controversy, he asserted that there was no bugging.

“The fact is that our team came across some discrepancies while checking the Defence Minister’s room on February 16,” he said, adding Director General of Military Intelligence then informed Defence Secretary Shashikant Sharma about it and recommended to him to seek the help of other agencies to verify why there were discrepancies.

“If the suspicion was on the military, the Defence Minister would have stopped MI (military intelligence) from checking his room. We still conduct checking of his room.”

-via ZEE News

Army Chief General Vijay Kumar Singh’s 21-month tenure has been consumed by a singular passion. He calls it transformation; turning the 1.1 million-man Army into an agile, lean and lethal force. The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is more cynical. It believes the only change General Singh wants is to have his date of birth changed from May 10, 1950 to May 10, 1951 so that he can stay 10 months more in office. The Army chief claims his honour is at stake. The government dismisses General Singh’s demand as petulant, pointing out that the Army chief has been free with his public comments and quiet about his standoff with defence minister A.K. Antony.

New Delhi, 11 February 2012. A few weeks after a Delhi court threw out Janata Party president Subramanyam Swamy’s plea to make Union home minister P. Chidambaram a co-accused in the 2G scam, the Supreme Court’s move on Friday to uphold the government’s decision on Army Chief General V.K. Singh’s age row comes as a major political victory for the Congress-led UPA.

If the government was elated with the ministry of defence ‘welcoming’ the Supreme Court decision, the BJP went into a sulk.

What is being viewed as a desperate reaction, BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, while terming the incident as ‘sad’, said, “An issue which could have been resolved sitting within closed doors has now been dragged in the open before the public. We hold the Centre, the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi responsible for the incident.” The other Opposition parties, including Prakash Karat-led CPI(M) went quiet.

For quite some time, the government has been pushed to a corner both inside and outside Parliament over the 2G issue and also on the Army Chief age row. The Opposition had not merely boycotted the home minister inside Parliament over the 2G issue, but General Singh’s move to approach the top court had sent alarm bells ringing in the UPA corridor.

Politically, particularly with elections in five states, the Opposition had been trying to combine all the controversies plaguing the UPA into electoral issues. Senior BJP leader L.K. Advani had repeatedly questioned the government over the top ministers’ role in the 2G scam. The BJP had also attacked the government for its “failure” to handle the Army Chief age row.

The judicial verdicts, will not merely silence the Opposition for some time, but also help the Congress-led UPA to regain control over its allies like the Trinamul Congress, which has been relentlessly opening up fronts against the Centre.

If the electoral verdicts in the five states, somehow go in Congress’ favour, the party is likely to emerge much stronger and take a firm grip on the allies looking out for possible political re-alignment.

If the Supreme Court’s decision had gone against the government, it would have completely destroyed its credibility in dealing with the armed forces and could have seen a rise in litigation in service matters.

Similarly, a decision against Mr Chidambaram would have thrown the Centre into a major political crisis.

http://www.asianage.com/india/age-row-sc-decision-gives-major-boost-upa-659

Gen VK Singh

Dushyant Dave.

Gen VK Singh

Sandeep Unnithan.

Army chief General Vijay Kumar Singh’s 21-month tenure has been consumed by a singular passion. He calls it transformation; turning the 1.1 million-man Army into an agile, lean and lethal force. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is more cynical. It believes the only change General Singh wants is to have his date of birth changed from May 10, 1950 to May 10, 1951 so that he can stay 10 months more in office. The Army chief claims his honour is at stake. The Government dismisses General Singh’s demand as petulant, pointing out that the Army chief has been free with his public comments and quiet about his standoff with defence minister A.K. Antony.

South Block has not seen such an ugly confrontation between civilian and defence authorities, at least since 1998, when Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat was sacked by the then defence minister George Fernandes for not agreeing to the appointment of the deputy naval chief. And that was a comparatively quiet fracas.

A joke within the armed forces testifies to the importance of heading the world’s second largest Army: ‘The Government listens to the Army chief, humours the air force chief and ignores the navy chief.’ From his teak-panelled office on the first floor of South Block, the Army chief has a spectacular view of India’s power centre.

He jets around in a 13-seat Embraer 135 jet from the IAF’s VIP fleet, drives in a convoy of black bulletproof Ambassador cars, is consulted on border disputes and is a key element of India’s military diplomacy.

Excerpt from India Today Cover Story.To read more, subscribe to the magazine.

-via India Today.

Binoo K John.

The ongoing standoff between the army chief, General VK Singh, and the government has become so messy that in national interest it is best to let the army chief go. No army chief in any country will be allowed to fight a case against his own government or refuse to heed the decision taken by the ministry on any matter.

There are various other reasons why an army chief, who has over the last one year shown many signs of taking a position contrary to that of the civilian authority, should be asked to go.

General VK Singh had two birth dates registered with the army and, after due process, the defence ministry has taken 10 May 1950 as his birth date, thus making it incumbent upon him to retire this May. Once a government takes such a decision, an army chief has to accept it. It is the supremacy of the civilian government that is at stake here.

After this decision was taken, Gen Singh, who till then was trying to get his tenure extended, switched tactics like a politician and started saying through leaks in the media that it was not a question of tenure but “personal honour”.

This stance, in turn, brings to the fore many such issues which exist in a constitutional twilight zone and hence can have no formal remedy. The following questions arise:

* Where is the question of personal honour when the sovereign state or government has taken a decision which he has no option but to obey?

* Whose ‘so-called honour’ is at stake here? What about the honour, sanctity and sovereign status of a duly-elected government which reflects the will of the people in a democratic system? The honour of the army has never been at stake here.

In the cat and mouse game that Gen Singh has been engaging in during the last one year, he has crossed all boundaries of accepted behaviour, worst of all by regularly leaking stories to the press and letting one particular defence correspondent see all the documents.

If Gen Singh had any notion of sensible behaviour expected of people in high positions, he should have let the national government and civilian authority’s decision to gain precedence over his so-called honour. He could have accepted the decision, maybe under protest. The general could have, after retirement, presented facts and documents to the public, if at all, for his “honour”.

Gen Singh is guilty of showing disrespect to his own government in many instances while this issue was being decided on by the government. He has even threatened to go to the Supreme Court and approached Pranab Mukherjee (who is higher in rank in the cabinet to the defence minister, and hence this was in open defiance of his own minister), who advised him against taking the matter to court.

Now, in a story again planted on Tuesday in sections of the media, Singh claims that he is being treated like the chief of the Pak army. Such outrageous leaks and statements alone are enough for the government to ask the army chief to go because there is every indication that he is getting ready to fight dirty. Under no circumstance can any government allow that.

In such cases, the example to follow is the US, where President Obama summoned and sacked General Stanley McChrystal, who was US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, for making comments against civilian authority and army strategy in a magazine interview.

In the US, unlike here, the president comes out in the open and speaks his mind. Pictures of him during the sacking meet with McChrystal were published to show that it is the civilian authority which calls the shots.

Obama justified his sacking decision: “I don’t make this decision based on any difference of policy with General McChrystal…But war is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private a general or a president… By going public, the general eroded the trust that is necessary to work together …” Obama rightly said.

The US president acted swiftly and decisively. Even the opposition accepted his decision because it concerned the army. A Republican senator then said Obama did the right thing because McChrystal had damaged the military by showing disrespect.

Using the same two arguments which Obama used, namely, supremacy of the civilian authority and the erosion of trust, the government must, without delay, remove the general. Otherwise, between now and May, the waters would be muddied so terribly that the fallout will cause permanent damage.

The relationship between the army and the government, and, in this case, the defence minister, will be eroded and that cannot be allowed to happen just to sustain or vindicate the “so-called “personal honour” of one man who had two dates of births registered with the army for so long.

-via Firstpost.

Gen VK Singh

Navneet Sharma.

Army chief General VK Singh, whose statutory complaint to change his date of birth has been rejected by the defence ministry, has faced another turndown — this time from Haryana over a plot he wanted swapped.

Gen Singh, who was given a one-kanal (420 sq metres) plot under the Haryana government’s “preferential allotment” policy at a discounted rate in Panchkula, later sought a corner plot instead in the area.

He spoke to CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda for allotment of the corner plot, citing his mother’s ill health as the reason.

“His (Gen Singh’s) request was received through the chief minister. But the plot had been allotted to someone else and could not be given to the army chief. The government was informed about this two months ago,” said a Haryana Urban Development Authority official.

“Besides, the preferential allotment policy has no provision for alternative plots,” added the official. “Once the government agreed with this view, the army chief was also informed.”

In December 2010, Gen Singh was allotted plot 75 in Sector 4 of Mansa Devi Complex at Rs 22 lakh. The market price for the plot then was more than Rs1.5 crore.

Under the “preferential allotment” policy, the government gives residential plots to domiciles of Haryana who have distinguished themselves in arts, culture, science and technology, social service, judiciary, defence or sports.

Gen Singh, who belongs to Bapora village in Bhiwani district, was allotted the plot out-of-turn after he approached the CM. After depositing 25% of the allotment price in April last year, he then requested for the corner plot. “My mother is not keeping good health due to her acute breathing and other health problems.

Living in a plot which is one side open and surrounded by plots from three sides would add to her health problems,” he wrote to the CM.

-via Hindustan Times.

Sandeep Bamzai

Attorney General (AG) Goolam Vahanvati has closed the door on General V. K. Singh‘s face as far as the controversy surrounding the army chief’s year of birth (May 10, 1950) is concerned. This means Gen Singh will have to retire in May, 2011 instead of May, 2012, as he has been claiming.

Sources told Headlines Today that the AG, after analysing each and every document and Gen Singh’s explanation, has found his claim completely unsatisfactory and trashed it outright. The AG has reportedly said there is no case for change in the year of birth whatsoever.

The ministry of defence (MoD) had referred the matter to the law ministry seeking clarity on Army Chief Gen Singh’s year of birth. With the law ministry asking the AG to give his opinion on the matter, the long running case may finally come to an end.

The AG considered several documents while evaluating the case. Apparently in 1965, Gen Singh had filled up a UPSC form where he gave 1950 as his year of birth in his own writing as it was a prerequisite. This is something that cannot be ignored even though Gen Singh had subsequently contested this.

Similarly, in the Indian Military Academy dossier filled up by him in January 1969, Gen Singh once again put 1950 as his year of birth. Crucially, in 1974- 75, the army list again gave his year of birth as 1950.

Sources have confirmed that after going through all the papers and documents, the AG has reportedly told the MoD that Gen Singh cannot change his year of birth at the last minute before retirement as this tantamounts to sacrilege.

Vahanvati is believed to have said this would lead to widespread disaffection in one of the finest fighting forces in the world. Moreover, all the records provided show Gen Singh is misrepresenting facts pertaining to his age. This is the second time the AG’s opinion has been sought in the matter. Both times the AG has been scathing in his observations.

Defence Minister A. K. Antony is on record as saying that, “The date of birth of Gen Singh has been maintained as May 10, 1950, at the time of his selection as corps commander in 2006 as well as his subsequent promotions as army commander in 2008 and the COAS in 2010.”

The AG’s opinion simply reinforces and strengthens the MoD’s earlier observation that the chief’s birth date should not be changed. What this means is that the MoD now has the ammunition to reject the chief’s complaint even more forcefully.

-via India Today.

In reply to a Parliamentary query, Antony said the Army Chief has two different sets of dates of birth in official documents and has filed a Statutory Complaint on his age issue.

“The date of birth of Gen Singh has been maintained as May 10, 1950 at the time of his selection as Corps Commander in 2006 as well his subsequent promotions as Army Commander in 2008 and the Chief of Army Staff in 2010.

“However, a different date of birth finds mention in certain documents and the Army Chief has filed a Statutory Complaint in this matter,” he said.

In the Statutory Complaint, Gen Singh has petitioned the Defence Minister against Ministry’s July 21 decision rejecting his contention of treating May 10, 1951 as his date of birth.

The Minister said as per his date of birth on May 10, 1950, “he is left with eight months and 23 days of service as on date.”

In the age controversy, on May 25, the Army Chief had filed a petition before the Ministry to treat May 10, 1951 as his date of birth but this was rejected.

While the Military Secretary branch records his date of birth as May 10, 1950, the Adjutant General’s branch has May 10, 1951 in its documents.

The Army Headquarters has said that Gen Singh’s matriculation certificate, which shows his date of birth to be May 10, 1951, cannot be ignored while deciding the issue.

-via The Economic Times.

Gen VK Singh

General VK Singh has left no stone unturned to officially become a year younger. It has now come to light that when the defence ministry was examining his date of birth controversy earlier this year, the Army chief had sought the intervention of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the matter.

The PMO, however, simply forwarded Gen Singh’s petition filed in April to the defence ministry, without taking any view. “The MoD had received on April 21, 2011, an unsigned petition submitted by Gen V K Singh to the PMO,” disclose MoD documents, accessed through an RTI application.

A senior Army official, however, said Gen Singh had not petitioned the PMO, but the force had simply replied to a “brief” sought by the PM’s principal secretary T K A Nair. In the RTI reply, the MoD said Gen Singh’s petition was put up before the law ministry, along with other relevant documents, to get an opinion on the issue of changing his date of birth from May 10, 1950 to May 10, 1951, as was being demanded by the Army chief.

The documents disclose that Gen Singh approached defence minister A K Antony directly only on May 25, over a month after the petition in the PMO. Subsequently, MoD in July held that Gen Singh’s date of birth would stand at May 10, 1950, and he would have to retire in May 2012.

Last week, Gen Singh filed a statutory complaint with MoD to seek a review of its decision over his age. Gen Singh filed the statutory complaint with Antony under the Army Act on Friday, requesting him to take a decision on the date of birth based on evidence and merit.

If Gen Singh’s claim of his actual date of birth being “May 10, 1951″ had been accepted, which he contended was not done earlier because of “vested interests”, his tenure as Army chief would have continued till March, 2013.

Rules suggest, a service chief can serve for three years or up to the age of 62, whichever is earlier.

-via The Times of India.

Firdaus Ahmed.

Army Chief VK Singh’s comment on the state of the nation as equivalent to “daldal” (morass) comes as no surprise. The remarks were part of his take on social activist Anna Hazare’s high-voltage agitation against corruption. As a citizen, Singh has every right to an opinion. As a member of the defence services, the right to voicing it is curtailed considerably. As army chief, it is much less so, particularly on politically charged issues and especially so in politically charged times as now.

That the army chief is currently in a tussle with the defence ministry over the controversy surrounding his date of birth makes his remarks mistimed. The decision of the ministry has been in favour of the earlier date of birth, resulting in Singh having to retire next year. The adjutant general has reportedly asked the ministry for the reason. Therefore his comments cannot but be read with his personal predicament as backdrop.

More importantly, the chief has laid himself open to questions from a different angle in his take: “Interesting in terms of how we are witnessing the power of democracy, the power of the people.” The democratic protests that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has attracted, both in Jammu & Kashmir and the Northeast, have not displaced the army from its position on the continuance of the Act. The fast of Irom Sharmila is into its second decade, to little avail. The move on dilution of AFSPA’s ‘draconian’ provisions has become a political football between the ministries of home, defence and law, since the army refuses to budge. Clearly, it appears that the democratic sensibilities of the chief are only selectively aroused.

To the chief’s credit is his own record on tackling corruption. That he has identified himself closely with curbing it within the ranks can be seen in his remarks on taking over the baton, “We will focus attention on improving internal health.” In his previous billet at Kolkata, he had taken action in the infamous Sukhna land scam. The graver Adarsh Housing Society scam, involving politicians and bureaucrats, has since scarred his predecessor’s name. Therefore, his desire to personally provide ballast to the national focus on the issue is understandable.

For the military as an institution, the message is loud and clear. A series of scandals has dented its image. Because it expends 10-15 per cent of public monies, being untainted is more than an issue in ethics — it is one of combat effectiveness. Singh is only echoing what he once said, “Until the time our internal health is good, we would not be able to fight the external threats.”

However, the immanent issue is one of civil-military relations. The fragility of our democratic polity, currently fully on display, suggests greater exercise of circumspection on part of the brass. Any overt overstepping of the line of deference rightly calls for a formal check by the minister. The brass is already reportedly under a ‘gag’ to curb its tendency to snipe at the bureaucracy, which in their mind’s eye runs the government. The problem with this is that it further weakens the credibility of the government, showing it up as ‘weak’. This redounds to increase the relative power of the army internally. This may not be in the best democratic interest.

As it is, democratic good health in terms of Parliament’s authority to legislate autonomously is under challenge. That the occasion has enabled a diversionary rallying of conservative formations behind the agitation indicates that the democratic upsurge is equally political as civil society-rooted. The military as an institution is in danger of an unwitting alliance with the conservative forces. Because it has weight in prestige, the army’s position can be misappropriated by forces it has little comprehension of, being politically naïve. Democratic good health can do without gratuitous buffeting of civil-military relations at this juncture.

-via Tehelka

Gen VK Singh

Editorial, The Tribune.

Chief of Army Staff General VK Singh has filed a statutory complaint to the Defence Minister seeking re-examination of his earlier application for a correction in his year of birth. General Singh had filed his earlier plea after seeking legal opinion, including from three retired Chief Justices of the Supreme Court. His recent complaint follows after the Ministry of Defence rejected his earlier plea.

It is regrettable that a Service chief has filed such a statutory complaint to the Defence minister after assuming the top post of Chief of Army Staff. It is for the first time in the country’s post-Independence history that a service chief has sought a change of such a nature based on a birth certificate that shows him a year younger to what he had entered in his recruitment form over four decades ago. The claim, if acceded to by the government, will permit him to serve for an additional nine months. The Army chief’s age claim issue is not about facts as much as it is about propriety. General Singh, who claims that he was born in 1951 as recorded in his birth certificate instead of 1950 as was entered in his records at the time of recruitment, has officially sought a correction only after being appointed to the top post. Considering that he earned all his promotions and eventual appointment as Army chief on the basis of 1950 as his year of birth, it is questionable whether he is being ethical in demanding that he be permitted to retire on the basis of an altogether different year of birth.

It is unfortunate that the institution of Army chief has been dragged into public focus. Both General Singh and the Ministry of Defence could have handled the issue more discreetly. The Defence Minister should have handled the issue with tact and gently persuaded the Army chief to drop the matter while General Singh, on his part, could have been graceful and let the matter be. That way, the honour and dignity of the office of the Army Chief would have been preserved.

-via The Tribune, Chandigarh

General VK Singh

The controversy over army chief General VK Singh‘s date of birth (DoB) refuses to die with the defence ministry and the army still at the loggerheads over the issue. In a latest, the adjutant general’s (AG) branch has questioned the legality of the defence ministry’s July 21 directive which stated that Singh will not be allowed to change his DoB from 1950 to 1951.

The AG’s branch, which maintains personnel records, has asked the defence ministry for an explanation regarding legal documents it has relied upon in fixing Singh’s DoB as May 10, 1950 and not May 10, 1951.

Singh will have to retire next May on turning 62, going by the DoB ratified by defence minister AK Antony, after being cautioned twice by the law ministry that any change in his year of birth would violate army rules and lead to unnecessary litigation. But if 1951 is taken as Singh’s DoB, he will retire in 2013.

Eastern Army commander Lt Gen Bikram Singh is expected to replace Gen Singh if he retires next year. However, the top job will go to Lt Gen KT Parnaik if Singh were to retire in 2013. Four former chief justices and a former solicitor general have backed Singh’s claim.

The controversy arose in May 2006 when conflicting DoBs of Singh were detected in the records of the Military Secretary’s branch (1950) and Adjutant General’s branch (1951).

Singh’s National Defence Academy records show his DoB as May 10, 1950, but his matriculation certificate puts it at May 10, 1951.

This instance of a service headquarters not implementing the defence ministry’s orders is only the second since independence in 1947.

The last time around, then Indian Navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat was sacked on December 30, 1998 for refused to implement orders on promotions given by then defence minister George Fernandes.

-via Hindustan Times.