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Govt rules out 'hasty decision' on Gen No.1
Govt rules out 'hasty decision' on Gen No.1 - The Times of India?
NEW DELHI: India will not get a General No. 1, a tri-service military chief, for the foreseeable future. The government has made it clear there is no move to appoint either a chief of defence staff (CDS) or a permanent chairman of the chiefs of staff committee (CoSC) soon.
Sources on Friday said the government "will not take a hasty decision" in the matter. "It needs serious discussions among various stakeholders. Such a decision can be taken only after a careful study and gauging the mood of all political parties," said a source.
This scotches all speculation that General Bikram Singh would be appointed as the permanent CoSC chairman once IAF chief Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne retires on December 31, paving the way for present integrated defence staff chief Lt-Gen Anil Chait to succeed him as the Army chief. This would derail the chances of Eastern Army commander Lt-Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag, who is slated as of now to replace Gen Bikram Singh when he retires on July 31 in the normal course of things.
It also confirms the TOI report on Wednesday that the CDS post will continue to remain in cold storage, where it has been kept despite being strongly recommended by the GoM report on `Reforming the national security system' in 2001 after the Kargil conflict.
Moreover, the government will also not appoint a permanent CoSC chairman, recommended by the 14-member Naresh Chandra Taskforce in its report submitted to PM Manmohan Singh in May 2012, in the run-up to the general elections early next year.
The existing CoSC comprises the Army, Navy and IAF chiefs, with the senior-most of them acting as the "rotational" chairman till he retires. A permanent chairman, with a fixed two-year tenure, would mean a fourth four-star general in the CoSC as the "first among equals".
A post like CDS, or even its watered-down version like a permanent CoSC chairman, is desperately needed to provide "single-point military advise" to the government, manage the nuclear arsenal and resolve inter-Service doctrinal, planning, procurement and operational issues.
But the politico-bureaucratic combine, both in the NDA and UPA regimes, has kept meaningful defence reforms on the backburner. Some quarters have even gone as far as to suggest — completely erroneously — that appointment of "an all-powerful general" could invite the possibility of a military coup.
The defence ministry has rejected all the crucial recommendations of Naresh Chandra Taskforce, in its comments submitted to the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) under the PMO, as first reported by TOI in June. After collating comments from all the ministries concerned, the NSCS is supposed to present a consolidated proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) for consideration.
As per the taskforce, the permanent CoSC chairman would also be an invitee to the CCS and NSC as well as head the proposed Special Forces Command. MoD, however, said only "certain ministers" were currently invited for CCS and NSC meetings. "There is no scope for the proposed CoSC chairman to be placed in this category," it said.
The MoD has also rejected the need for "cross-staffing", or the posting of military officers to MoD to bridge the civil-military disconnect, holding that there were institutional mechanisms in place to ensure "joint consultations" as well as provide "integrated advise" to the defence minister.
Govt rules out 'hasty decision' on Gen No.1 - The Times of India?