Army Chief General Manoj Pande retiring in 4 months, Gen Upendra Dwivedi named Vice Chief

Ajay Banerjee

New Delhi, February 6

Indian Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar and Army Chief General Manoj Pande are slated to superannuate on April 30 and May 31, respectively. Two senior-most officers of each of the services are now Vice Chiefs.

In the Navy, Vice Admiral DK Tripathi took over as its Vice Chief on January 1 while the orders to post Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi as the new Army Vice Chief have been issued.

He will join on February 15 and would be replacing Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar. The latter has been posted as the Northern Army Commander headquartered at Udhampur.

Lt Gen Dwivedi has earlier been in the Army Headquarters as the Deputy Chief and Director General of Infantry. He served for two years in the operationally active Northern Command at the time when India and China have been engaged in a military standoff.

Within the armed forces, the posting of second senior-most officers as vice chiefs is seen as a move to position them for the next job – the chief. Rarely does seniority in service gets ignored for selection as chief.

In the past 10-years – that is both the terms of PM Narendra Modi – only once the government ignored the principle of seniority. This was when it posted General Bipin Rawat as the Army Chief in December 2016 by superseding then senior -most Commanders, Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi and Southern Army Commander Lt Gen PM Hariz.

Prior to that, it in July 1983, when Lt Gen SK Sinha, an Army commander, was superseded and General AS Vaidya was appointed Army Chief.

In the Navy, the last such break from the seniority principle was in April 2014, when the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government appointed Admiral Robin K Dhowan as chief of the Navy. That was after Admiral DK Joshi quit the post in the wake of a series of mishaps. Admiral Dhowan was appointed superseding Western Naval Commander Shekhar Sinha.

Admiral Joshi, who had 15 months left in service, resigned on February 26, following a mishap involving submarine INS Sindhuratna in which two Navy officers were killed and several others were injured. In August 2013, submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, killing 18 personnel on board. The sudden resignation by Admiral Joshi changed the line of succession in the Navy.

Ready to succeed General Pande

Within the armed forces, the posting of second senior-most officers as vice chiefs is seen as a move to position them for the next job – the chief. Rarely does seniority gets ignored

When seniority was ignored

• In past 10 years, the Narendra Modi-led Union Government ignored the principle of seniority in the Army only once
• General Bipin Rawat was appointed as Army Chief in December 2016 by superseding the then two senior-most Commanders, Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi and Lt Gen PM Hariz
• Earlier in July 1983, Lt Gen SK Sinha was superseded and General AS Vaidya was appointed the Army Chief