It shows MoD’s poor diligence
Raj Kadyan
Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh’s writ petition filed in the Supreme Court on January 16 has been grabbing media headlines ever since. Date of birth is a personal issue. This should have remained a case between Gen. Singh as an individual and the ministry of defence (MoD). But the fact that he is heading one of the largest armies in the world has turned it into an unseemly national controversy.

That the two dates of birth of Gen. Singh remained unresolved between different branches of the Army for so many years is a poor reflection on the internal functioning of the Army Headquarters. The ministry of defence, too, has handled the issue with poor diligence.
It failed to realise the implications involved in it for the institution of the Army. Soon after becoming the Army Chief in March 2010, Gen. Singh is known to have sought reconciliation of the anomaly. There was enough time for the MoD to discuss the issue with the general and find a mutually acceptable solution. Keeping in mind the sensitivity of office that Gen Singh held, this should have been done discreetly. The middle ground did exist. The General has repeatedly stated that he is merely interested in defending his credibility and honour and not in an extension of his tenure. Anyone who has donned the uniform will know that for a soldier, honour is his most prized asset. The government could have shown grace by officially accepting May 10, 1951, as his date of birth while still asking him to retire on May 31, 2012, since that was the perceived date of his demitting office when he was appointed the Army Chief. However, no serious effort seems to have been made and the opportunity was lost.
Gen. Singh filed a statutory complaint in August, 2011. Handling of the complaint again shows shoddiness in the functioning of the MoD. The complaint dealing with a date of birth is purely an administrative matter and it should have been disposed of as such. Instead, the ministry rejected the complaint after seeking the advice of the Attorney General, turning it into a legal matter. It seems that the ministry was expecting, if not actually wanting, the matter to be taken to the court. Political leaders do not get deeply involved in such cases; they go by the advice of bureaucrats. The bureaucracy’s antipathy towards the defence forces is well known and can be empirically proved. They apparently saw it as yet another opportunity to further compromise the Army.
They therefore brought in the Attorney General, thus manoeuvring Gen. Singh into a position where seeking legal intervention remained his only option. This perception is gaining ground and will result in an unfortunate escalation in the known friction in Army-bureaucracy relations.
It is pointless speculating who will win. But it is easy to predict the loser —the Army will end up with a badly bruised image. There still exists a possibility of resolving the issue out of court. National interest demands it.

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Govt went by Army inputs
D.B. Shekatkar
First and foremost as a citizen and an Army officer, Gen. V.K. Singh has the right to go to court to seek legal redressal. But the larger question is why did this situation arise?
It reflects a mismatch in the internal functioning of the Army Headquarters and the ministry of defence (MoD). The government gets no pleasure in creating a controversy of this nature especially when people of this standing are involved.
The anomaly started with the year of birth (of Gen. Singh) being listed differently in various official records. The government has no role to play in this when somebody writes the year of birth as 1950 or 1951 in official records. The year of birth continued to be listed as 1950 (or 1951) in different documents, including the Army list. Even when the anomaly was pointed out, I wonder if the Army Headquarters was seized of this issue promptly.
When the matter initially came to the government’s notice, the Army Headquarters provided inputs to the MoD to suggest that the year of birth of the Army Chief was 1950. The government had no reason to assume that this information was incorrect and therefore it did not. It went by the information supplied by the Army. Therefore, the government cannot be blamed for taking any wrong decision.
When the statutory complaint was put up by Gen. Singh last year and brought before the government, expert legal opinion was taken on the basis of inputs and records provided to the legal experts.
The government promptly took the opinion of the Attorney General, the highest law officer of the land. Based on legal advice, the government took a decision and again, based on the inputs and records, it made a statement before Parliament. So, even at this stage, the government was only following the relevant procedures.
The Army should now evolve a mechanism where personal records of all officers are reconciled so that a situation like this does not spill over to the public domain. Had this been done earlier by the Army, there would have been no question of involving the government in the first place.
Another issue that warrants consideration is whether the matter could have been amicably resolved without petitioning the courts. Such issues can always be resolved with free and frank discussions with the appropriate authorities and decisionmakers. I worry about what sort of message will percolate down the rank and file of the armed forces.
When the issue was referred to the court of law, the government was left with no option but to take an independent decision at this stage. If any commitment was given by Gen. Singh earlier on agreeing to accept May 10, 1950, as his date of birth, I’m sure the government will place the relevant facts before the Supreme Court and will act as per the directions of the Court.

(As told to Sridhar Kumaraswami)