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Army chief battles govt

Over the last three months, Gen. Vijay Kumar Singh sued the government in the Supreme Court, claimed the defence minister ignored his complaint about being offered a bribe and is now fending off demands for his resignation after the leak of a letter he wrote to the prime minister claiming the army was falling to pieces.

That last revelation has been so alarming it has managed to unify the country’s squabbling political parties, which say the general may have gone too far and exposed the country’s ‘flawed’ defence to its enemies. Singh, who is due to retire in two months, has denied any role in the leak of the letter .

“The leaking of the letter should be treated as high treason. This cynical approach to tar my reputation has to stop. The source of the leak has to be found and dealt with ruthlessly,” Singh said in a statement on Thursday, according to the Press Trust of India.

Defence Minister A.K. Antony told reporters that an investigation has been ordered into the leak, which “only helps our enemies.”

The tumble of conflicts has highlighted the dysfunction between the man at the helm of one of the world’s largest armies and the government that appointed him nearly two years ago.

“We could not have a better way of showing the world how far we are from being a world power than the drama being staged in public view by the custodians of our security,” political analyst Manoj Joshi wrote in the Mail Today newspaper on Thursday. “The fact that he was shooting off letters to the defence minister and the PM indicate that he is more interested in muddying the record” than fixing the problems that plague the army, Joshi wrote.

On Thursday, Antony accepted the army needed “substantial step up for modernisation,” but refused to get drawn in to how the government planned to handle Singh. “All three service chiefs still enjoy the confidence of the government. They’re still working.”

But the chorus for strong action against the army chief grew louder on Thursday after reports that he had sought a CBI probe into a serving officer based on a letter written by a Trinamool Congress MP. While the BJP doubted the timing of the disclosure, the RJD said he was “out of his mind”.

The army chief opened a fresh front by forwarding the letter by Ambika Banerjee against Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag to the Central Bureau of Investigation.

“The complaint of the MP that the army chief has sent to CBI should be probed. At the same time the time chosen by the army chief after one year raises questions and doubts on his behaviour,” BJP leader Balbir Punj said.

He demanded a public reply by the army chief on the delay.

“Because the issue became public, he must take the nation in confidence whether after getting the complaint he brought it to the knowledge of the defence minister and prime minister. If he did, what was their response. What was the reason behind the delay,” Punj said.

The letter by the Trinamool MP of May 2011 alleges “procurement scams” in the “secretive” Special Frontier Force (SFF), when Lt Gen Dalbir Singh was its inspector general. The SFF is under the administrative control of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country’s premiere foreign spy agency.

Hitting out at V.K. Singh, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Ramkripal Yadav said: “I want to ask the army chief, an MP wrote a letter to you one year back on some corruption... why did you keep the letter for one year... He should have given it to his ministry and the ministry would have taken action,” he said. “He is out of his mind... I think he is working under some motivation. I want to urge the government that there should be action against him without delay,” he said. —