18.12.16

New Chiefs appointed

In a move that evoked criticism for junking the long-enshrined seniority principle in appointing Service chiefs, the government appointed Lt Gen Bipin Rawat as the next Army chief superseding two Lt Generals. He will replace Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag on December 31.
Lt Gen Bipin Rawat (infantry), who took over as the Army vice-chief in September, bypassed Eastern Command chief Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi (armoured corps) and Southern Army Command chief Lt Gen P M Hariz (mechanised infantry).
Although it's well within the right of a government to appoint whoever it wants as the next chief, successive dispensations have almost always followed the seniority principle. Successive governments have almost always followed the seniority principle to anoint the new military chief. Exceptions have been few and far between, like when Indira Gandhi superseded Lt-Gen S K Sinha to appoint Gen A S Vaidya as the Army chief in 1983. Similarly , Air Chief Marshal S K Mehra became IAF chief by superseding Air Marshal M M Singh in 1988. Lt-Gen Sinha, of course, quietly resigned but went on to later become governor of both Assam and J&K, and also served as India's ambassador to Nepal.
The last supersession was in the Navy . Vice-Admiral Shekhar Sinha was superseded by Admiral Robin Dhowan to become Navy chief in April 2014 after the then chief Admiral D K Joshi resigned taking moral responsibility after a string of warship accidents.
The opposition immediately attacked the Modi-led government for “further politicising“ the armed forces, which are justifiably proud of their apolitical and secular credentials, after it first went to town over the “surgical strikes“ against terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir. But conversely, say some experts, military chiefs are meant to oversee the management of national security and strategy in tune with what has been decided by the top political executive.

IPS officer of the 1980 batch and J-K hand Rajiv Jain was named the new chief of the Intelligence Bureau while Anil Kumar Dhasmana of the 1981 batch, an expert on Pakistan, was named to head the Research and Analysis Wing.Both Jain and Dhasmana are second-in-command in their respective agencies and will have a term of two years each as chiefs.

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