Army to restructure 57,000 posts of officers, other staff

92 the first batch of 65 recommendations were approved by the government.

In major reform aimed at improving the combat efficiency in the Indian Armed forces, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved a series of recommendations that would redeploy 57,000 soldiers in non-core areas to operational duties.

This is part of restructuring of some British-era prevailing systems.

The recommendations were made by the Lt Gen (Retd) D.B. Shekatkar committee appointed to recommend measures for enhancing combat capability and re balancing defence expenditure of the armed forces to increase the teeth-to-tail ratio. "The first phase of the reforms involves redeployment and restructuring of approximately 57,000 posts of officers/JCOs/ORs and civilians," the Defence Ministry said a statement.

"Restructuring of the Indian Army is aimed at enhancing combat capability in a manner that the officers will be used for improving operational preparedness and civilians will be redeployed in different wings of the armed forces for improving efficiency," stated a press released issued after the Cabinet meet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

After the cabinet meeting, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said, "The government has constituted a committee, which will make recommendations for enhancing combat capability and balancing defense expenditure.''

Various reforms

The committee had given 99 recommendations to the government in its report on December 2016, out of which the Ministry of Defence has decided to implement 65 suggestions.

Under this, the government will do away 39 military farms and several Army postal departments in peace locations. There will be optimisation of signal establishments to include Radio Monitoring Companies, Corps Air Support Signal Regiments, Air Formation Signal Regiments, Composite Signal Regiments and merger of Corps Operating and Engineering Signal Regiments.

Apart from this, in the first phase the government will also undertake restructuring of repair echelons in the Army to include base workshops, advance base workshops and station workshops in the field Army.

There will also be redeployment of ordnance echelons to include vehicle depots, ordnance depots and central ordnance depots apart from streamlining inventory control mechanisms.

The 11 member committee was appointed by the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in May last year and the report was submitted to the Defence Ministry in December 2016.

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