Four-star Gen Chauhan takes over as India’s second CDS on Friday

General Chauhan, former Eastern Army Commander and military advisor to National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, has his agenda of military theatrization on the top priority and first of theatre commands are expected to come into existence by the end of this year.

Updated on: Sep 29, 2022, 23:15:40 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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India’s second Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Anil Chauhan takes over as Secretary, Department of Military Affairs, in the rank of full General and with four stars at the CDS Headquarters on Friday morning. It is understood that General Chauhan's father is going to put four stars on his illustrious son.

Gen Anil Chauhan takes over as India's second CDS on Friday. File photo of the General as Eastern Army Commander.

General Chauhan, former Eastern Army Commander and military advisor to National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, has his agenda of military theatrization on the top priority and first of theatre commands are expected to come into existence by the end of this year.

General Chauhan was the Director General Military Operations (DGMO) of first CDS Gen Bipin Rawat when he was Army Chief and the two were close comrade in arms with the late commander fond of his 11 Gorkha battalion junior. Gen Rawat had told this correspondent about the war capacity of Gen Chauhan against India’s adversaries and his ability to call a spade a spade.

Since Gen Chauhan could not make it to Army Chief rank on grounds of seniority, he was aiding NSA and first CDS in framing the military response to the PLA belligerence in East Ladakh sector. As Eastern Army Commander, Gen Chauhan was praised for his efforts to upgrade the military infrastructure all along the LAC in Sikkim and in Arunachal Pradesh. In Army, he is known to be a no-nonsense General, who lets his actions speaks rather than words.

The Modi Government’s decision to appoint Gen Chauhan as CDS also lay to rest all the excitement in the military headquarters with all the serving and retired candidates expecting to be appointed as the successor to Gen Rawat.

While Gen Chauhan takes over as second CDS, he has to find a via media with the three-armed wings on theatrization of commands as well as synergizing the three services by breaking down silos. Even though the three services want to protect their turf and power, the future lies in synergy and military theatrization in order to respond to a more powerful adversary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More