Army Chief Vs Defence Ministry - The slugfest gets murkier!

Who will have the last laugh???

 The strained relations between the Indian Army Chief General VK Singh and civilian government ebbed further as the former alleged in a media interview that he was offered Rs. 14 crore bribe to clear a particular deal and the Defence Ministry replied by ordering a CBI probe into the issue. While stopping short of naming the retired officer who purportedly offered him the illegal gratification, the Chief said he had promptly informed the Defence Minister AK Antony verbally. There has been no written complaint or formal measure being taken against the said officer or an internal inquiry being launched by the Indian Army.

As the General promises to do more revelations and expose the "sutradhar" (the stage manager) of the play, the mess is only going to get dirtier.  The Army Chief's latest diatribe has left many questions unanswered - 

1. Why the Army Chief had not taken up the issue when the incident happened around a year and half ago?

2. Was it enough on the part of the General, who was undertaking the cleansing of the force, to take the matter of corruption knocking on the doorstep of the Office of the Chief of Army so lightly?

3. Why did not he held a firm ground on the issue of bringing the retired officer lobbying for a foreign firm to book and get the firm blacklisted with the same vengeance he fought the age battle? (Chief has said in another media interview - that he was shocked beyond his wits to have reacted.)

4. While the Chief has gone to media saying his predecessors have been accepting bribe and the trend will continue even after him? What steps has he taken in this direction to make the internal health of the force better. (Adarsh Society scam and Sukhna land scam seems to be only the tip of the ice-berg, in front of the allegations made by the General.)

Here is the unprecedented statement issued by the Army Headquarters on March 5, following the reports of mobile monitoring equipment being deployed in the Capital to intercept telephonic conversations of senior bureaucrats and politicians at the peak of the age row -

ARMY REACTION TO MEDIA STORIES ON ‘MOBILE MONITORING EQUIPMENT’

1. The Story on Maligning the Army is a fabricated fiction and people responsible are some disgruntled officers, retired and serving, whose sole aim is to create a mistrust between the Army and the Ministry of Defence  (MoD).  The Military Intelligence has the mandate to routinely debug the offices of senior functionaries of the MoD and the Army.  In a routine check, some abnormality was noticed in the Raksha Mantri’s office, which was brought to the notice of the Defence Secretary.  Further checks carried out revealed that the voltage drop noticed was due to malfunctioning of the instrument.  The Army does not carry out “Of the Air Monitoring” but seeks the assistance of the IB, if it finds the need.  The Monitoring equipment is in the possession of the Signal Intelligence and is deployed along the borders and in Counter Insurgency areas.  This equipment is under the control of the Director General Defence Intelligence Agency(DG DIA) and not under the Military Intelligence. 

2.The present story has been put out by Lt Gen (retd) Tejinder Singh, who was the Ex DGDIA and who has been earlier questioned on the purchase of the “Of the air Monitoring System”, without sanction by the technically empowered committee.  This officer has also been an allottee in Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai and has also offered bribe on behalf of Tatra and Vetra Limited, which supplies vehicles to BEML.  The Officer along with some disgruntled serving officers of the military intelligence, against whom disciplinary and administrative actions is in the pipeline has worked out this fictitious story.  The Army strongly denies this and take strong exception to such salacious and malafide stories, coming out as news.