Lt-Gen V K Singh is next Army chief

NEW DELHI: The government on Friday formally announced that Lt-Gen Vijay Kumar Singh, currently Eastern Army Command chief at Kolkata, will take
over as the new Army chief from General Deepak Kapoor on March 31. Lt-Gen Singh’s appointment as the next chief has been a foregone conclusion for long since he will be the senior most Lt-Gen in the 1.13-million strong Army when Gen Kapoor retires.

Successive governments have almost always gone by the seniority principle in armed forces, unlike other services, except in rare instances like Lt-Gen S K Sinha’s supersession by Gen A S Vaidya as the Army chief by Indira Gandhi in the early 1980s. The announcement, however, comes at a time when Gen Kapoor is grappling with the fallout of the now infamous Sukna land scam case, in which four generals including his close aide and military secretary Lt-Gen Avadhesh Prakash have been indicted.

Gen Kapoor and Lt-Gen Singh, in fact, had locked horns over the Sukna case, with the latter calling for immediate termination of services of Lt-Gen Prakash, as reported by TOI earlier. Lt-Gen Singh, a third-generation officer from the Rajput Regiment, is likely to have a tenure of just two years and two months as the chief since his date of birth has been virtually settled at ‘May 10, 1950’ after a controversy over it while he was commanding the Ambala-based 2 Corps in 2007-2008.

The controversy had arisen since his date of birth was recorded differently in Adjutant General (AG) branch and Military Secretary (MS) branch.

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