By IANS
New Delhi : The proposal to create a chief of defence staff (CDS) could go on the backburner with the three service chiefs squabbling over the additional number of star-rank officers they should get.
The numbers game has now expanded into another area with the navy and the air force contending that several of their two-star officers should be upgraded to bring them on par with their army counterparts, reliable sources said.
“In the process, all this talk of jointmanship has come unstuck and the process of creating a CDS will get even further delayed,” the sources said.
The spat first erupted at a meeting Defence Minister A.K. Antony called late last month to discuss the implementation of the second part of an expert committee’s recommendations on increasing the number of two and three-star ranks in the three services.
As per the recommendations of a committee headed by former defence secretary Ajay Vikram Singh, 156 such posts were to be created, with the army getting 95 and the other 61 being divided between the navy and the air force.
The army chief Gen. J.J. Singh is believed to have argued that the increased posts should be in proportion to the size of the three services and the tasks they handled.
Given the army’s role in guarding the borders, in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and in the northeast, and its increased deployment on internal security duties, it deserved to get more posts at the major general and lieutenant general level, the army had reportedly said.
Expressing his “surprise” at the issue being brought up, Antony is believed to have told Singh, navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta, and air force chief Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major to resolve the matter so that a comprehensive note could be put up to the cabinet.
Soon after the meeting, Singh also shot off a five-page note to Antony making out his case.
The navy and the air force then raised the question of anomalies, the sources said.
An army command, it was pointed out, was headed by a lieutenant general, and his deputy, designated chief of staff, was of the same rank.
A naval command was headed by a vice admiral but his deputy, also designated chief of staff, was only a rear admiral. Similar anomalies also existed in the air force, it was pointed out and these needed to be rectified, the sources said.
As of now, there seems to be no early resolution of the dispute, the sources added.
Currently, the three service chiefs report directly to the defence minister. A chiefs of staff committee (COSC) headed by the senior most chief deals with issues relating to inter-services coordination.
A panel set up after the 1999 Kargil war with Pakistan felt that the system needed to be fine-tuned and recommended that the post of CDS be created.
The cabinet accepted the recommendation in 2000 but the matter has been hanging fire ever since. In the interregnum, however, the government has created the position of chief of integrated defence staff (CIDS) as a first step to improving coordination.
The army chief has, however, gone on record to say “the time is not ripe as yet for a CDS”.
“The borders with Pakistan and China are yet to be settled. Also, the internal security situation in Jammu and Kashmir being service specific, the present system (of a chiefs of staff committee) is functioning well,” Singh said last month.
“However, in the middle and long term, just as in other democracies, the CDS system would function well… with elements of all three services as also the ministries of defence and external affairs,” he added.