Fighting for awards

Over the past several years, there has been a growing suspicion that the country’s gallantry awards are getting devalued. Within the defense forces and outside, there have been nagging doubts that even the most prestigious of awards, such as the Param Vir Chakra (PVC) and the Ashok Chakra, are being compromised at the altar of political expediency.

After the Kargil conflict, the government announced four PVCs, including one for Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav. Initially, the Army had announced it as a posthumous award, but later, it issued a correction, claiming that though a soldier by the same name had died in Kargil, the award was for a Yadav who has suffered battle injuries. This was dismissed as a genuine error, but developments over the past few months have raised serious questions about the very process by which the winners of India’s highest gallantry awards are chosen.

This year, the selection process for the Ashok Chakra awards has kicked up a stink. Says a retired senior Army officer who has sat on committees to decide bravery awards, “The entire process has not only done injustice to the genuine winners, but has also dishonoured all the past winners.”

The retired officer says the question is not if “they were all brave but if they did an act of outstanding bravery in that particular operation. Their death alone does not justify the highest honour.”

A serving Army officer, himself a winner of a high bravery award, says the process has not gone down well with his peers. “Only 21 military men have won PVC since Independence, despite us fighting wars in 1948, 1961, 1965, 1971, 1999 and then Siachen. We have also fought in Sri Lanka and as part of UN forces all over the world,” the officer reasons. “Here you have 11 Ashok Chakra winners in just one year, that too six of them from the Mumbai operations alone.”

 A senior IPS officer says that the award given to Delhi police inspector MC Sharma too has raised uncomfortable questions. “There is a high court hearing on the Batla house encounter, and the Delhi police is yet to carry out the basic magisterial inquiry.

Even the high court has pulled them up for this. There are too many loopholes,” he argues. “What if something significantly reliable turns up tomorrow to prove that the Batla house encounter was stage-managed? The government simply opted to be politically correct,” he says.

It was clear that the government had finalised nine names for Ashok Chakra. But just before Republic Day there was a rethink, and the final list was expanded to 11. “It became quite evident that politicians and their political agendas can override any institution and every process,” says a senior civil servant.

What are the awards?
Param Vir Chakra (PVC), the highest gallantry award of the nation during war time, is given to military personnel for the highest degree of valor or self-sacrifice in the presence of enemy. It is India’s equivalent of the British Victoria Cross, or America’s Medal of Honor. 

Ashok Chakra is the peace time equivalent of PVC and is given for the highest degree of valor or self-sacrifice away from the battlefield. It has been awarded to police personnel, to Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma (the first Indian to go to space), to a brave pilot who saved the lives of several senior military officers flying in his plane, and to the men who took on the terrorists during the Parliament attack in 2001.

Besides PVC and Ashok Chakra, there are a series of gallantry awards that are given according to the degree of valor. For gallantry in war, while Param Vir Chakra is the highest, it is followed by Maha Vir Chakra and Vir Chakra. In peace time, after Ashok Chakra comes Kirti Chakra and Shaurya Chakra.

How are winners chosen?
The awardees are supposed to be selected on the basis of a rigorous process that goes through several layers of scrutiny. For example, if a soldier in the battlefield has carried out an act of outstanding valor, then his immediate superior makes the recommendation based on the post-operation assessment. This assessment is done on the basis of interviews with the other personnel who took part in the operation. “In any operation, the battalion commander, though he may not have been on the scene himself, would be monitoring the operation over radio. Those recordings of the live operation become the first records. After the operation, we carry out detailed interviews and cross-checkings,” says an Army officer who, as a battalion commander, had recommended some of his colleagues for gallantry awards. 

The battalion commander’s recommendation passes through a series of filters - at the Brigade headquarters, at the Divisional headquarters, and then the Corps headquarters. The Corps forwards it to the Army command, and from there it goes to the Army headquarters in New Delhi. At each of these levels, the recommendations are scrutinised to ensure that only the most deserving of the candidates go up and there is no room for controversies.