New Delhi, December 1
Former Army Chief General VK Singh’s proposal made in 2011 for merging two separate promotional avenues for officers of the rank of Major General and above has been formally dropped by the Army headquarters.

As of now, the existing ‘two-stream’ promotion policy shall continue when officers are promoted from Brigadier to Major General and then onwards as Lt Generals, said sources, adding that this was also the opinion of the Ministry of Defence.

The ‘two-stream’ policy segregates officers in two distinct paths of progression when they get promoted as Major General. The categorisation is done on the basis of the annual confidential reports of the officers. While one category is called ‘Command-and Staff’, the other is termed as ‘Only Staff’. Officers in the former stream go on to command divisions and corps and are also in contention to become Army commanders. Those in ‘only staff’ do not get this chance.

The two-stream policy had come into force in 2009 during the tenure of General Deepak Kapoor. In 2010, the then Army Chief Gen VK Singh sought to merge the ‘two streams’ saying it was a suggestion of a study conducted within the Army.

The Defence Ministry had rejected the proposal saying that promotion policies can’t change with every new chief and told the Army to go for an in-depth study to iron out differences. The Army has now opted to maintain status quo and abandon VK Singh’s proposal.

One of the reasons to create the ‘two-stream’ policy was to ‘adjust’ greater number of officers after some senior posts were added by the ministry on the recommendation of the Ajai Vikram Singh Committee (AVSC). While the cadre has grown, very few posts have been created at the Command-level formations. So, the segregation of streams is considered important to allow only a fixed number of officers in the Command stream.

In the past four years, two mountain divisions have been added allowing for two Major General-level vacancies in the Command stream. A new Mountain strike crops is coming up and this could open up at least four posts - one Lt General and three at the Maj-Gen level. “All new promotees cannot be put into a single stream as this would reduce the tenure for officer at the helm, seriously impacting readiness and making the tenure meaningless”, said a senior functionary in the ministry.

Currently, a Major General gets to command a division for around 12-15 months and a Lt General commands a corps for around 12 months. If everyone is put in one stream, the tenures will get reduced drastically. On the flip-side, those who get selected for ‘only staff’ stream lose out on commanding battle formations and have to be contended with desk-bound jobs, leading to heart-burn. A division has around 15,000-18,000 troops while a corps has about 45,000 troops.