Deepak Kapoor to be Next Army Chief

New Delhi, July 26: Adhering to the seniority principle, the Government has decided that Vice Chief of the Army Staff Lieutenant General Deepak Kapoor will be the new Army chief after the present incumbent General Joginder Jaswant Singh retires on September 30.

A formal announcement about the appointment was expected to be made by this month-end, the Armed Forces normally announce the name of their incoming Chief two months before the superannuation of the incumbent.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet approved Lt Gen Kapoor's name as the new Army Chief, to take over as Chief of the 1.13 million-strong Army, here yesterday, it was reliably learnt.

An artillery officer, Lt Gen Kapoor has been groomed to take over ever since Gen JJ Singh became the Chief on February 1, 2005, first as Northern Army commander and then as Vice Chief since January this year.

The ACC approval to Lt Gen Kapoor 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 Gen Kapoor since he passed out of IMA ahead of the latter in the order of merit, he retires on the same day as Gen JJ Singh since he is older in age.

Lt Gen Daljeet Singh, in turn, is junior to Lt Gen 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In 1983, erstwhile Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ''superseded'' the then Army Vice Chief Lt Gen SK Sinha to make his junior Lt Gen AS Vaidya the Chief in a clearly political move.

The second time was when Lt Gen Shankar Roychowdhury, who had virtually packed his bags to go home, was catapulted into the Army Chief's post after Gen BC Joshi suddenly 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.

During his so far 40-year-long career, Lt Gen Kapoor has commanded the 161 Uri Brigade, the 33 Corps in the North-East and the Northern Command.

UNI