Appointment of new Army vice chief sparks a row

Dear Sir,
The report, 'Appointment of new Army vice-chief sparks off row' (September 02, 2009) has several factual errors in it. Firstly, it erroneously presumes that, on his appointment as vice-chief, Lt Gen PC Bhardwaj will bypass the senior most serving Army Commander, Lt Gen VK Singh. Nothing could be further from the truth.The vice-chief is equivalent in rank to an Army Commander, and, in any case, the assumption of supersession is irrelevant as Army Commanders report directly to the Chief and not to the vice-chief. Secondly, there is no malafide intent in the Army Chief recommending to MoD that he needs an officer with adequate residual service to take over as the vice-chief. The charter of the officer is to handle the critically important Operations, Intelligence and Operational Logistics directorates, and, it is for this reason that the Chief had recommended to MoD that he needed an officer who could provide continuity in the job. With a tenure of 15 months available to him, Lt Gen Bhardwaj is expected to do just that. It is also wrongly stated that the vice-chief is a Principal Staff Officer (PSO) who handles procurement of hardware and personnel issues. It may be noted that he is not a PSO. He does not handle either procurement, for which the PSO is the Deputy Chief (Planning and Systems), or personnel issues, for which the PSO's are the Military Secretary and the Adjutant General. Lastly, there is no existing protocol which rules that the vice-chief takes over as Chief. The question of supersession is therefore unfounded. You are requested to carry these clarifications for the benefit of your readership.
Maj Gen Raj Mehta (Retd)