New Delhi, July 26
Vice-Chief of Army Staff Lt. Gen Deepak Kapoor was today appointed as the next Chief of Army Staff. He would succeed Gen J.J Singh in the hot seat at the South Block when the incumbent Chief of Army Staff retires from service on September 30.
Lt. General Kapoor, who would take charge of the 1.13 million-strong Army- was born in 1948 and was commissioned into the Regiment of Artillery on June 11, 1967. An alumnus of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington,
he has had a long career of 40 years, during which he has worked in various commands, staff and instructional positions including those at 161 URI Brigade, the 33 corps in the north-east and the Northern Command.
An Artillery officer, Lt General Kapoor has been groomed to take over ever since Gen J.J Singh became the Army Chief on February 1, 2005 -- first as Northern Army Commander and then as Vice-Chief since January this year.
He took part in the 1971 operations in Bangladesh and served as the chief operations officer of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission that was deployed in Somalia in 1994-95. He was awarded the PVSM in January last year.
The appointment of Lt General Kapoor as the next Chief of Army Staff also immediately scotched speculations that he might be passed over for other contenders in the fray. The challenge had come from western army commander Lt. Gen Daljeet Singh and Southern Army Commander Lt. Gen Aditya Singh -- both Armoured Corps officers.
Interestingly, all three belong to the same Indian Military Academy (IMA) course and were commissioned as officers together in June 1967. But while Lt. Gen Aditya Singh is senior to Lt. General Kapoor since he passed out of IMA ahead of the latter in the order of merit, he retires on the same day as Gen J.J Singh since he is older in age and has as such lost out on the chance to be the Chief of Army Staff.
Lt. Gen Daljeet Singh, in turn, is junior to Lt. General Kapoor since the latter passed out ahead of him. No two officers in the armed forces are of the same seniority. And if they are from the same course, the seniority is decided by the rank in the order of merit.
Only twice earlier has the Army's chain of succession been upset in recent decades.
In 1983, erstwhile Prime Minister Indira Gandhi "superseded" the then Army Vice Chief Lt. Gen S.K Sinha to make his junior Lt. Gen A.S Vaidya the chief in a politically motivated move.
The second time was when Lt. Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury -- who had virtually packed his bags to go home -- was catapulted into the Army Chief's post after General B.C. Joshi died in harness in 1994.
An Army Chief in the making usually gets to command either the Udhampur-based Northern Command or Chandimandir-based Western Command -- the two most operationally crucial formations of the five regional commands.
