Sting Operation Traps Major General in Supply of Rations to Troops in High Altitude

Shiv Aroor | Headlines Today | New Delhi, June 25, 2012 | UPDATED 21:51 IST
Now, army probes bribe charge against ASC major general in Jammu and Kashmir A senior army officer, attached to a Northern Command unit, has come under investigation over the allegation of corruption for contracts that deal with the supply of rations to soldiers in India's most hostile zone, Jammu and Kashmir.
Sources told Headlines Today that the Major General at Army Supply Corp (ASC) in Udhampur, V.K. Sharma, who oversees the procurement and supply of rations for soldiers in the north, has come under the scanner for corrupt collusion with private contractors to manipulate supplies.
There have been multiple complaints against Maj Gen Sharma, but it was understood that he was caught red handed in a sting operation after he allegedly demanded bribes for contracts.
The shameful allegation comes as yet another big embarrassment for the army, which has received various kinds of accusations against some its top officers in the recent past.
The reason why the army has been taking the case seriously was that there have been many high profile cases in the past when even a chief of the ASC was caught in shameful acts of corruption. Cheating soldiers out of their very basic due has always been seen as the lowest, most condemnable form of corruption.
It clearly shows that the soldiers guarding India's northern frontiers along the Line of Control (LoC) and in the Ladakh region have more than just the enemy to look out for.
Investigations were still on and there were no indictments yet, but the army once again faces the terrible prospect of the enemy being one of its own.
Read more at: Bribe charge against ASC major general in Jammu and Kashmir
Sources said the Northern Command received several complaints against the officer, mostly from contractors who accused him of demanding favours in return for awarding contracts. Given the serious nature of the complaints and the senior rank of the officer, an operation was carried out by Army authorities to probe the matter.
According to reports, the officer was caught red-handed in a possible “sting operation” involving a contractor. “A court of inquiry has been ordered into allegations of financial impropriety against Maj Gen Sharma,” confirmed a senior Army HQ officer, denying that the officer has been placed under detention.
Maj Gen Sharma was in charge of supplies for the vital Northern Command, which has the largest number of soldiers deployed for counter insurgency and border duties. The command procures crores worth of rations and supplies for soldiers posted at the Siachen glacier, Kargil, the Kashmir valley and along the Line of Control.
Comment: Traitors in Army Supply Corps need to be got rid off expeditiously and ruthlessly. These guys are the enemy within supplying Gasoline adulterated with water to the forward troops and contaminated Rations. Indian Army mobility severely compromised by Corruption in forward Areas. Chinese laws must be implemented here- SHOOT the Traitors.

Retired Army officers react on VK Singh's age row

Hindustan Times
New Delhi, January 16, 2012
Lt Gen Vijay Oberoi (retd), former Vice Chief of Army Staff, said: “I am glad that the Chief has approached the court. It is a matter of honour. It will help the Army as it shows he is a strong chief. The ministry of defence should have sorted it out in house. But they took it to media. You cannot play with Chief of Army Staff on technical grounds.”

Lt Gen Raj Kadyan (retd), former Vice Chief of Army Staff and Chairman, Indian Ex-servicemen Movement (IESM): “It is unfortunate and unprecedented. He should have resigned and then approached the court. As an individual, he has full justification in seeking justice for him, but it will damage the image of the Army.”

Maj Gen Rajender Nath (retd), a military historian: “I am very sad at the development. I sincerely wish it should have been avoided. Indian Army is the second biggest Army in the world and this sort of development does not bring good name. The General should have sorted it earlier in his career.”

Air Marshal RS Bedi (retd) said, “Both sides are wrong (government and Chief of Army Staff). It is unfortunate. Chief should have resigned and then approach the court. We have done damage to the institution of the Chief. On the other hand, government bungled it. Matriculation certificate decides the date of birth in this country. The government and the bureaucrats are not understanding the sensitivity attached to the post of Chief of Army Staff."
Retired Army officers react on VK Singh's age row

Age Row- Bureaucracy conspiracy?
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh does not want to comment on the controversy over army chief General V K Singh's age because it is a 'sensitive issue'.
Union Defence Minister A K Antony is 'very sorry' about what is happening. Then why don't these two gentlemen at least ensure that the issue is settled with dignity, and the army chief's birth date is recognised as 1951 as per the official records?
There is a certain intolerance creeping into government that sees a contrary view as dissent, and reacts to it with a heavy hand. Any officer who does not agree with the often blinkered views emanating from the corridors of power is axed, as many will testify, with the result that most now hesitate to speak their minds.
This might make the politicians happy, but the fact of the matter is that they now rarely benefit from informed and impartial opinion.
In this particular case, however, it is more to do with getting a chief of their choice into government.
The poor army chief does not know what he is up against, as it is difficult to box at shadows and conspiracies that do not reveal themselves.
A petty government has pushed the army chief into a corner, feels Seema Mustafa

Formulation of the succession Plan
Govt going by army's word on Gen's age by Nagendar Sharma & Rahul Singh, Hindustan Times
Two immediate predecessors of the current chief — General JJ Singh in 2006 and General Deepak Kapoor in 2009 — concluded that the legally maintainable year of birth for General VK Singh can only be 1950. The government’s subsequent decisions were based on this. He was commissioned in the army in 1970.
Govt going by army's word on Gen's age

Comment
As a techno-legal view, if the COAS resigns his commission before going to court and subsequently the court upholds his stand and gives a verdict that his yob is 1951, legally the Resigned / lost / surrendered President's Commission, CANNOT BE REVOKED AND HE CANNOT BE RE-COMMISSIONED.
Veteran Gp Capt Subramanian

Army Officers and the Golden Norms

This is an excellent write up.
Best wishes.
Harbhajan Singh
Please find an excellent article, ARMY OFFICERS AND SEVEN GOLDEN NORMS by Veteran Bombay Sapper Maj Gen Mrinal Suman, AVSM, VSM, PhD.
Gen Suman is a soldier, a scholar, a thinker and a prolific writer on matters Military and National Security. He is known for being frank and forthright in expressing his views; and, his articles are a reader’s delight.
Veterans are welcome to comment on the article and fwd the same to Maj Gen Mrinal Suman

Army commander is the ultimate custodian of all military lands in his command

My Dear Chander,
I have been reading Gen Suman's articles with great interest and find myself in agreement with his views. However it is not so in the case of Sukhna and Adarsh scams. Refer: Scams & the Army: Silence is not golden by Major General Mrinal Suman, AVSM, VSM, PhD- click here

May be his information is different than what I have come to know. His piece needs to be read along with my article, 'Malfeasance in the Military' which appeared in the Tribune. I have always maintained that commanders, from unit upwards must, like the Caeser's wife, be above suspecion.

Sukhna Case
The proposer of this school (girls school!) had earlier asked for an NOC to build a Resort. Army had declined to issue an NOC. On arrival of a new corps commander he changed tack and now wanted an NOC to build a school. (He is no educationist!) Now there is a law that no construction can be allowed within 1000 yards of the perimeter of a cantonment. This law is in the interest of the army. Surely the army cannot be a party to compromise the very law meant to safeguard its interests. It does not matter, for what purpose the building is.

We learn that the brochure of the so called school had the picture of the then MS showing him as the future director of the school. Further he had shown the school as an affiliate of Myo College at Ajmer. Which was totally false. This itself should give us an idea as to the type of person this Aggarwal is. This officer (MS) during his second tenure at IMTRAT in Bhutan (now as the commandant) rebuild the officers mess and this very Aggarwal was the contractor, who did the work. He (MS) was also the Colonel of Kumaon Regt (at Ranikhet) where two projects were under construction. One of War Memorial (Rs 1.5 crore) and the other to rebuild the museum. Kumaon Regt already had a first rate museum. One of the contractor was Aggarwal, not the same Aggarwal, but could be a relative or just a co-incidence! Do we see anything wrong in what happened at Sukhna!

Adarsh Case
The plot of land called, 'Khukhri Park' was handed over to the army in EXCHANGE for another piece of land taken from the army by the civil administration, some decades earlier. So this land was in possession of the army and belonged to it and there could be no two opinions on this point. While the DDE maintains the records of military lands and administers some part of these (perhaps other than Class A land) but the ownership remains with the military. Station, sub-area and area commanders are responsible to ensure that there is no encrouchment etc of this land. Army commander is the ultimate custodian of all military lands in his command. It would be wrong to assume that DDE could sell, barter or gift away or return this piece of land back to the civil or for that matter any piece of cantonment land (not even camping grounds which are 'stand alone' pieces of land far away from cantoments!) If that was not so, much of Delhi Cantt would have been lost by now. At Pune cantt, the then Defnce Minister, Shri Pawar wanted to grab some land but military put its foot down.

In the case of Khukhri Park, this land must have been handed back to the civil by the staff of DDE in FULL Connivance with those at Station, sub-area, area and command headquarters. DDE staff would have also done the necessary paper work to show the land as still belonging to the civil. Because as long as it was military land no private construction could come up on it. NOT even for Kargil Widows. There is absolutely no provision to hand over military/cantonment land to any civil society NOT EVEN KARGIL WIDOWS or WIDOWERS! It was a massive conspiracy! the subarea commander went to NDC and came back as area commander and stayed on to earn, AVSM and PVSM. Was also cleared for promotion to the rank of lt-gen without commanding a division. The only other case I know where a maj-gen was cleared for the rank of lt-gen, was Military Secretary to the President. AHQ had initially said NO to the President and it is only when he forced the issue (I believe at the threat of resignation) that AHQ had relented.

Those who took a flat had to pay Rs 60 lakhs or so each. Now this is a tidy sum for an officer to muster. I also learn that this area commander was going around 'arranging' money for some senior officers! The DEO has a complete floor (may be four to six appartments, so figure out the ammount he had to pay!) Let us await the outcome of military inquiry and the CBI's efforts. Now a high court bench too has been asked to investigate the case.

I am of the firm view that much wrong was done at, both Sukhna and Mumbai and it is near impossible to justify the wrong doings in these two cases.
With regards,
Lt Gen Harwant Singh (Retd)
Former DCOAS
Present Status of Adarsh
CBI to file FIR in Adarsh scam; may name Ashok Chavan as accused
Adarsh scam: Action against Ramanand Tiwari

MOD blacklist barrel grows longer

Ajai Shukla / New Delhi November 17, 2009, 0:19 IST
Over this last decade, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has “blacklisted” so many foreign arms corporations that the military’s modernisation plan has virtually stalled. The MoD “blacklist” is not a formal document; an arms vendor is mostly embargoed unofficially, when senior bureaucrats agree that it is playing dirty.

The hit list reads like a who’s who of global weapons suppliers, including corporations with good records of delivering arms to India. Starting with Bofors in the late 1980s, the list grew to include Denel of South Africa; Israel Military Industries (IMI); Singapore Technologies Kinetic (STK); and now Thales of France. Earlier this year, the world’s biggest defence contractor, Lockheed Martin, was on the blacklist. Now another global giant, BAE Systems, seems headed there after problems with setting up an assembly line in HAL Bangalore for the Hawk jet trainer.

It is hardly news that arms sales and corruption walk together. Arms vendors routinely bribe political leaders, bureaucrats and senior military officers, not just in India but worldwide. BAE Systems allegedly bribed Saudi Arabian royals with hundreds of millions of dollars in the infamous Al Yamamah contracts. Thales, credibly accused of bribing South African presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma, is also being sued by Taiwan to recover US $590 million allegedly paid in kickbacks to win a deal for six warships. Most arms companies maintain multi-million dollar slush funds to ease the way for their giant deals.

But the Indian MoD is wholly wrong in behaving as if the problem is just one of predatory arms corporations. All those bribes are being paid to somebody; but no MoD official is in jail for having accepted a bribe. Instead South Block’s vendor blacklists grow longer and longer. These blacklists are now choking defence procurement.
Read the full article from Business Standard: Ajai Shukla: No thanks, you're blacklisted!

Corruption in the Armed Forces is reflection of the Nation's standard of governance

Agony of today's society is that no one is ready to believe that there can be an honest human being in present materialistic world of Glitter, Glamour and Gleam (3G).

I have tried to debate about a few cases of Army which have been hitting portal stands every now and than, but what about those which are internally being probed? There is a need for the Armed Forces to form a Tri Service Anti Corruption Committee to unearth internal wrong doings. This committee should:

Prepare dossiers of such people and keep them always under scanner

Make inter force more amalgamated and knit woven

Allow exchange of each others good and bad way of financial dealing

Allow a unique and sound financial management of all the three services where a large part is dealt by Army

Develop a healthy competition amongst services to improve records

Develop for short durations an unhealthy rivalry with presumption of spying each other ways of functioning

Measures leading to overall improvement in the Armed Forces financial credibility.

Readers would agree that until unless Indians have fears of external agencies, they become unafraid. Another agency which is more or less equally responsible for corruption is the functions of the Comptroller General of Defence Account (CGDA) in India. There is a need to make the provision in the system to carry out Surprise Checks of Accounts (SCA) and Audit of Works (AOW) of CGDA on quarterly basis at all levels; to bring this organization under one or the other part of investigating agency scanner. I also feel that the present provision of CGDA audit is not strong enough to tame the corrupt people. I would suggest that one part of the Armed Forces only should be allowed to scrutinize and carry out audit of CDA. As the CDA activities remain unchecked, and the organization staff is viewed as demi-god, until unless such a provision is made in the law, the corruption remains our main stream of Business.

I again repeat that Corruption is in our blood; statement of Shri Jagan Nath BA, nearly a decade later after India became a sovereign in 1947; and Indians have traveled nearly fifty years after that till date with a large part of society becoming corrupt and lesser struggling to remain honest. World over, I have accounted over one hundred and fifty five different movies made based on corruption as theme, where honest people are trapped by dishonest, and honest man's next generation takes nearly 25 years to prove his ancestor innocent. Same stories are most of the times are seen in real life itself where corrupt people with the help of police get away and honest who files a complaint, keeps running from one police station to other and one court to another exhausting both financially and physically.

However, as I know, the Indian Army is still out of such option but whenever a soldier or lower rank officer, junior commissioned officer, non commissioned officer or a soldier is tried for different offence of financial irregularity, he always tries to link his dismissal or severe punishment with one or the other senior offices in hierarchy. A very famous case of Indian Army Siachin Glacier Fake encounter to get awards, which had rocked the Nation, is still alive in the mind of people.

I would also like to debate a few issues of lucrative services and arms of Armed Forces world over which tempt future officers from as Gentlemen Cadets (GC) during training itself. Barring United Kingdom and United States of America where larger number of GC opt for glamorous and action thrilled service, but most of the Asians, South Africans and Middle East countries have shown new generation trends opting first for Services and logistics, ordnances and other supplies service, mechanical engineering of transport , thereafter as second choice the fighting arms and Infantry being last in the Preferred Order of Choice (POC). Even now Indian Military Academy has given various incentives to candidates to join infantry. As per the media reports, in June 2007 out of over four hundred GC passing out Parade, where President APJ Abdul Kalam took the salute, out of five best GCs, only one GC had applied for the services and none for Infantry.

The falling POC indicates about the change of mind set of new generation from changed theme of National Patriotism (NP) to Comforts of Life (COL). It is the COL which takes precedence over sacrifices and survival. It indicates the tilt towards individual officer's future course of action and line he is going to follow. The POC of new generation is so materialistic oriented that sometimes it becomes difficult for judges also to differentiate between arms to be allotted. Now a days PCO is governed by:

Comfortable life after commissioning;

Availabilities of opportunities to be exploited;

Less harsher and physically tough life demanding less body and mind exercises;

Most important family life after marriage;

Now days most of the youths join forces to fill the tummy

Youths become Patriotic by Default (PBD), thus, their POC is guided by Comforts of Post Commission Life (CPCL)

I would be sharing some of the findings of corruption in Army during my survey from previous three months:

1. A very common and famous saying especially by corrupt people is prevalent in the Army that is Quote "one, who does not get an opportunity is honest; otherwise ....". The same quote is also being circulated in every Government Office in the entire India as well.

2. As most of the corruption cases which are being investigated within Army involves various department dealing with Supplies, equipment procurement, building construction and accommodations. In addition, of late a new scandal has rocked Army Medical Corps also. In nut shell the places where procurement and supply for forces is involved, the corruption is prevalent.

Readers would agree with me that corruption in Army is mainly attributed to outside environment prevailing in the country. Various factors which affect corruption in Army would be debated in the next episiode. Request my readers to share their views at s_kalpna@hotmail.com

I, S Kalpna Sharma, am a freelance journalist who frequently writes on various issues relating to human values. My impetus of debate has been always focused on current issues which affect human life and social behavior. Whenever I debate on human values, my readers support base has widened.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=S_Kalpna_Sharma
Corruption in Army

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