Antony Vs Army Chief – Knock-out round?

The already strained relation between the Army Chief and the Ministry of Defence ebbed further on Wednesday and the imbroglio seemed to be heading towards the knock-out round as Defence Minister AK Antony left the decision on the Prime Minister office amidst a growing political criticism of General VK Singh.

Entering the knock-out round??

 The battle between that started with the row over the Army Chief’s age and went through various stages like General Singh dragging the government to the court over his date of birth, then bribery bombshell, took another worse turn on Tuesday as a letter damning the Army’s preparedness surfaced. A united establishment and political parties pointed fingers at the Army Chief’s office for the leakage, a charge hard to prove.

The Parliament was rocked for the second day in succession and the censure against the Army Chief grew cutting across political lines. Otherwise reticent Antony made a statement in the Rajya Sabha for the second consecutive day and said: “These issues are being examined in the Ministry of Defence. By their very nature such issues cannot form the subject of public debate. Publishing the contents of secret communications within Government cannot serve our national security.”

Taking a serious view of the letter (written on March 12, 2012) with details of the Indian Army’s preparedness getting into the hands of the media, the Defence Minister also said that the decision on the issue will be taken following consultations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

“I have made serious note of the observations. After consulting the Prime Minister and colleagues, we will take appropriate action,” Antony said.  According to senior defence ministry officials, the matter has gone beyond the purview of the Ministry of Defence and any decision will now only come from the Prime Minister Office.

The opposition party BJP also criticized the Army Chief for writing letter to the Prime Minister rather than handling the matter of the force’s modernization with “deftness”. Again the timing of the scathing letter coming at the end of the two year tenure of General Singh was doubted by many.

Earlier, the Army Chief’s startling statement to a newspaper about a bribe offer being made to him by a lobbyist in 2010 had created a furore in the Parliament. The ensuing trading of allegations and counter insinuations, where Antony said that the General had refused to pursue the matter then, also led to the raising of questions on the timing of the Army Chief’s revelations.

Even as political parties demanded action against the Army Chief “within hours and not days”, any decision on the matter is unlikely to come soon as heads of several countries including China are in the country to attend the BRICS summit and an adverse measure can prove embarrassing for the government.

While the political parties demanded the government to find out from where the letter was leaked, the pin-pointing is an uphill task for the establishment.

As the chorus of opposition against the Army Chief grew, he was still on the official visit to Srinagar on Wednesday and was yet to submit a written complaint to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Sources in the CBI also indicated that a senior level official of the CBI had met the Army Chief on Monday evening at his house to get a formal complaint, but it did not materialize.