Modi govt bestowed Padma Vibhushan on late Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat

|HT|

The Narendra Modi government has taken the right step by bestowing Padma Vibhushan on late Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who died in a helicopter crash last month while still in harness. The award is well deserved for a CDS who put respect for military shoulders above all material gains and fought to restore its rightful glory. While General Rawat has passed into history, the Modi government and its national security planners must take the former CDS mission to fruition by announcing the military theatre commands in the 75th year of Indian Independence. Before Gen Rawat lost his life in Nilgiris, he had sent the final draft military theatre command structure and raising to the Army, Navy and Air Force Chiefs and had directed them to return the report by April 2022 with comments, if any, for incorporation into the final structure.

It is not that the Modi government has put the much-required theatre commands on a back-burner after Gen Rawat’s unfortunate demise. The national security planners have had series of informal and formal meetings with the three chiefs to sort out structural or operational issues and the movement is positive. The government is tight-lipped about the military theatre commands but it is quite evident that in the final announcement each of the three services will spearhead India’s riposte in case of war with other two supporting it. While the Indian Army will spearhead guarding 15106.7 km of Indian land frontiers, the Navy will guard 7516.6 km of coastline and the Air Force will guard the skies and defend the country from any intrusion from either the north or the west. In the military theatre commands, all the three services will have a pin-pointed role, and no one will be reduced to a supporting arm as the Indian Air Force had feared in the past.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)