Lt General Dhiraj Seth appointed as next Army chief, to assume office on June 30

Lt General Seth was serving as the Vice Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS), a position he assumed in April this year.

Updated on: Jun 13, 2026, 20:49:59 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth was appointed on Satruday the next Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), the government said in a statement, adding that he will assume office on June 30.

Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth has been appointed as the next Chief of the Army Staff. (ANI Photo/Naveen Sharma) (Naveen Sharma)

“I am directed to convey the approval of the President to the appointment of Lt General Dhiraj Seth, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM as the next Chief of the Army Staff in the substantive rank of General, with effect from 30 (th) June, 2026 vice General Upendra Dwivedi, PVSM, AVSM, with a tenure upto 31st August, 2028,” a statement of the Ministry of Defence said.

Lt General Seth was serving as the Vice Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS), a position he assumed in April this year. He will assume the office of the army chief as the present army chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, retires from service on June 30.

Lt General Seth is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, and was commissioned into the Armoured Corps in December 1986.

All about Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth

With a career spanning nearly four decades, Lieutenant General Dhiraj Seth has had extensive experience across the operational, strategic, capability development and institutional domains.

“His command assignments include an Armoured Regiment in the desert sector, an Armoured Brigade in the Western Theatre, and a Counter Insurgency Force in Jammu & Kashmir,” the government statement said.

The next COAS has commanded the Sudarshan Chakra Corps, one of army's premier strike formations; served as General Officer Commanding, Delhi Area; and commanded South Western Command and Southern Command.

Lt General Seth has a rare distinction of commanding the two operational Army Commands – South Western Command and Southern Command – and providing strategic oversight across critical theatres for over a period of two and a half years.

During the course of his service, he held several key staff and strategic appointments that significantly influenced operational planning, force management and capability development.

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

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