By IANS
New Delhi : The defence ministry is probing a modern-day "mutiny" by a civilian officer of an Indian Army controlled road-building organisation – on the 150th anniversary of India's first War of Independence that had once been termed the "sepoy mutiny".
"I have received a complaint. I have asked my officers to find out more," Defence Minister A.K. Antony told reporters here Wednesday.
He was responding to questions, on the sidelines of a military awards function here, on a media report stating that B.B. Lal, a chief engineer with the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), had appropriated to himself the rank and status of a major general and had asked his other civilian colleagues to take up military ranks.
Stating that the BRO "is strictly speaking not under me", Indian Army chief Gen. J.J. Singh added, "The BRO has been designed for working in frontier regions, sometimes with the army.
"They have the ethos of the army. We have to have safeguards to ensure that they function according to the military ethos."
Kolkata-based The Telegraph said Wednesday that BRO chief Lt. Gen. K.S. Rao had sent a report to the defence ministry on the Lal episode that he described as "subversive activity which may lead to mutiny".
According to Rao's report, Lal had asked all civilian officers in the BRO to be treated on a par with army officers and authorised himself to wear the rank of a major general.
Rao, who has suspended Lal, is said to have used the word "mutiny" as Lal is believed to have been speaking for a clutch of BRO civilian officers.
Civilian officers in the BRO wear a uniform that is different from that of the Indian Army and carry civilian designations like executive engineer, superintending engineer and chief engineer.
The BRO is engaged in some of India's most sensitive road construction projects in the northeast and in Jammu and Kashmir, as also in Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
It has a strength of