The Indian military will witness a significant jump in the number of senior officers in the next few days.
Number of senior officers in armed forces to increase as govt implements panel report
NEW DELHI: The Indian military will witness a significant jump in the number of senior officers in the next few days. The government is set to approve 30 Lieutenant General posts in the army and its equivalents in the navy and air force, besides a much larger number for ranks just below Lt Gen.
Sources said part two of the AV Singh Committee report, which recommended steps to speed up promotional avenues in the military to avoid stagnation, is set to be approved in the coming days.
The first part of the committee report, dealing with speedier promotions up to the rank of Colonel and equivalent was adopted in 2004.
Sources say the second part of the report, dealing with promotion of officers between ranks of Brigadier to Lt General, and their equivalents in the navy and air force has been cleared by finance department and defence ministry. “We are expecting government clearance any day,” a senior ministry official told DNA.
According to the proposal, the army will get 20 new posts of Lt General, the navy will get four Vice Admirals and the air force six new Air Marshals; 75 new Major General posts will be created in the army, in the navy 14 new Rear Admirals and 21 Air Vice Marshals in the air force.
The army will get 222 new Brigadier posts, while the navy will get a combined total of 324 posts for Captain and Commodore, and the air force around 476 new posts of Air Commodore and Group Captain.
Sources hint that the formula agreed to by the navy and air force has resulted in them gaining at the Vice Admiral and Air Marshal levels, while losing out on the junior ranks.
The army was pitted against the two over the contentious proposal from the beginning. It accused the navy and air force of demanding an unfair share of the new senior ranks.
Its argument primarily was that increase in the number of senior officers, as a proportion of total officer cadre, should be the same. It meant that the navy would get no Vice Admiral and air force would have got only one Air Marshal.
After months of meetings and an inability of the forces to agree upon a solution, the MOD has now imposed a new formula: the navy and air force will get the same proportion of increase as the army gets over its existing numbers and not in relation to the total number of officers. For example, the army is getting 20 new Lt Generals over the existing 61. So both navy and air force get 60/21 (a new post for every existing three) increase in the same rank.
j_josy@dnaindia.net
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