Top Army officer tasked to lay logistics for theatre command

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 8

The formation of much-awaited “theatre command” structure for the armed forces has gained ground with a senior military commander being tasked to set up the administrative and logistics structure of the theatre command on the western front.

A theatre command aims at amalgamating available military resources under a single command authority for a specified area. The government has mandated Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Bipin Rawat to create the theatre commands.

The CDS has tasked the commander of the Indian Army’s South-Western command at Jaipur to set up the structures of the western theatre command that would look after the borders with the western neighbour.

The existing area of the Army’s Northern Command has been kept out of theaterisation ambit. The IAF’s deployment in J&K and Ladakh will also not be altered. The full amalgamation of three armed forces into a “theatre command” would take at least two years, official sources said.

“The thinking process is still on. The Jaipur-based Commander will come with the plan on which all units of the Army, IAF and the Navy will be integrated under the western theatre. Once that plan is ready and the structures are in place, a theatre commander will be appointed and be given the ‘operational command and control’ of the units which come under the western theatre. The existing ‘area commands’ of the Army, IAF and the Navy would cede their ‘operational powers’ to the theatre commander. Gradually, all roles of the existing commands will go to the theatre commander. The existing commands will function as advisory to the theatre commander,” sources added.

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