TEN YEARS ago, the Indian Navy suffered a disgraceful defeat. The humiliation was inflicted not by any inimical foreign power, but by powers-that-be in New Delhi’s South Block. In December 1998, the then Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, was unceremoniously booted out at the instance of ‘honourable’ defence minister George Fernandes, who could not make him bootlick.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a staunch nationalist, expected to be the last person to hurt the country’s honour, had his compulsions to back the Defence Minister. Fernandes was playing a key role in letting the government survive, acting as go-between with Tamilnadu chief minister Jayalalithaa. The Defence Minister’s main job, in fact, was to rush to Chennai to satiate her routinely. Bhagwat’s refusal to have vice admiral Harinder Singh, enjoying Fernandes’ confidence, as his deputy was the ostensible reason for the sack. Actually, the purpose was to teach a lesson to the service chiefs; they were harming entrenched interests doing deals in South Block.
In July that year, defence secretary Ajit Kumar had conveyed Fernandes’ instructions to the service commanders that they should seek prior approval of the ministry before intercepting any vessel suspected to be carrying narcotics and arms. The three service chiefs jointly wrote back that interdiction operations in the Andamans were ’mandated operations’, which did not require the ’prior approval’ of the ministry.
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No honour please, you are Indian Navy Chief
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