General Anil Chauhan will take over as India’s new Chief of Defense Staff (CDS) on Friday, more than nine months after the death of the country’s first CDS in a helicopter crash, General Bipin Rawat, officials familiar with the matter said on Thursday. The government announced Chauhan’s appointment as CDS on Wednesday, ending months of uncertainty over who would succeed Rawat. Chauhan retired as the Eastern Army Chief on 31 May 2021 and was the Military Advisor to the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) before being appointed to the top post.
Commissioned as a member of the same Gorkha Rifles regiment as Rawat, Chauhan will lead efforts to make the best use of military resources for future wars and operations. His appointment as CDS has generated considerable interest as it is the first time a three-star officer has been brought back from retirement to a four-star rank (Cabinet approved the creation of a CDS post at the rank of four-star star general in December 2019).
This was only possible after the government amended the Army, Air Force and Navy rules in early June to widen the pool of officers from which the CDS was to be drawn – making retired three-star officers from the three services among those eligible for induction. Chauhan is 61. New rules announced in June stipulated that CDS service can be extended to 65 years. If that’s the case, Chauhan will work with six different service leaders to drive the theater effort.
After Rawat’s death on December 8, 2021, the ride has slowed and the government now expects Chauhan to provide the impetus for long-awaited military reform. “The new CDS will have to pick up where General Rawat left off. His top priorities will include managing the theater effort, achieving unity in the armed forces, ensuring that all stakeholders are on the same page, defense preparedness and indigenization of weapons and systems,” said former Director General of Military Operations Lt Gen Vinod Bhatia (retd ) .
Chauhan was appointed the country’s top military commander at a time when India and China are locked in a border row in eastern Ladakh and the government has focused on modernizing the armed forces through indigenization. As CDS, Chauhan will also serve as Secretary, Department of Military Affairs (DMA), Permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and Single Point Military Adviser to the Defense Secretary.
Chauhan was commissioned into 11 Gorkha Rifles in 1981. The three chiefs, General Manoj Pande, Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari and Admiral R Hari Kumar, were commissioned later the first two in December 1982 and the latter in January 1983. The current theater model for enhancing tri-service synergy seeks to establish four integrated commands two land theaters, an air defense command, and a naval theater command. The armed forces currently have 17 unified headquarters spread across the country.
Chauhan will have to deal with the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) lingering concerns about the current theater model, as reported earlier. The IAF’s concerns have raised questions about the model’s viability and suggest that differences between the services have still not been bridged. A lack of consensus on joint structures could delay military reform, officials said.
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