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Lieutenant General Pande to take over as next army chief on April 30
Lieutenant General Manoj Pande is currently the senior-most officer in the army after Naravane. In the past, the government has selected new service chiefs from a panel of top officers and overlooked seniority.
Lieutenant General Manoj Pande will take over as the next army chief on April 30 on the retirement of General Manoj Mukund Naravane, officials familiar with the matter said on Monday.
Pande, who is currently serving as the vice chief, will be the first officer from the Corps of Engineers to hold the top position.
The government has gone by seniority in naming Pande the next chief as he is currently the senior-most officer in the army after Naravane. In the past, the government has selected new service chiefs from a panel of top officers and overlooked seniority.
Before assuming the charge of vice chief on February 1, Pande was heading the Kolkata-based HQs Eastern Command.
An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Pande was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers in December 1982. He commanded an engineer regiment during Operation Parakram in the Pallanwala Sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.
Operation Parakram, the large-scale mobilisation of troops and weapons to the western border, followed the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
In his 39-year military career, Pande has commanded an engineer brigade in the western theatre, infantry brigade along LoC, a mountain division in the Ladakh sector and a corps in the North-east. He was the commander-in-chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command before he took charge of the Eastern Command.
Pande is taking over as the army chief at a time when India is laying down the roadmap for the military’s theaterisation to best utilise the resources of the three services for future wars and operations.
India’s first chief of defence staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who was killed in a helicopter crash last December, was spearheading the theaterisation drive. The government is yet to appoint his successor. The CDS’s demise was seen as a setback to the ongoing military reforms, including theaterisation.
