|HT|
Lieutenant General Manoj Pande is set to become the next Army chief, and will succeed General Manoj Mukund Naravane who completes his tenure on April 30. Lt . General Pande is the first engineer to hold the top military post. On February 1, he had taken over the army's vice-chief, replacing Lieutenant General CP Mohanty who had retired. Before assuming the charge, the National Defence Academy alumnus was heading the Eastern Command in Kolkata. Commissioned into the Corps of Engineers in 1982, Lt General Pande commanded an engineer regiment during Operation Parakram in the Pallanwala sector along the LoC. During Operation Parakram, the Indian armed forces had carried out its biggest mobilisation after the terror attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001. In a military career spanning nearly four decades, the general has commanded engineer brigade in the western theatre and infantry brigade along LoC. He also led a mountain division in Ladakh and a corps in the north east.
Lt General Pande was the commander-in-chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command before he took charge of the Eastern Command.
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