Army Chief overturns Gen V K Singh's decision

Friday 08 June, 2012.
Army Chief overturns Gen V K Singh's decision
Overturning the decision of his predecessor Gen V K Singh, Army Chief Gen Bikram Singh has lifted the ban on promotion of Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag clearing the way for his appointment as Eastern Army Commander.
The 3 Corps Commander, who can head the army in 2014, was put under a Discipline and Vigilance Ban by Gen V K Singh on charges of "abdicating responsibility" in handling an intelligence and surveillance unit under his command after a failed operation in Assam.
The decision to lift the DV ban on Lt Gen Suhag was taken by the Army Chief and the officer can now be promoted, sources said in New Delhi on Thursday.
The post of Eastern Commander is lying vacant since Gen Bikram Singh took over as the Army Chief. The DV Ban resulted in the holding up the promotion of the officer as Eastern Army Commander. The promotion had been already approved by the Defence Ministry and was being considered by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) for the elevation.
Gen V K Singh had issued a show cause notice to the officer on 19th May and subsequently imposed the DV Ban on him.
Lt Gen Suhag filed his reply on 31st May, the same day Gen V K Singh retired and the new incumbent took over.
Lt Gen Suhag was earlier given only seven days to respond to the notice but was later given ten more days to do so after the Defence Ministry intervened and sought a detailed reply form the Army Headquarters about the entire episode.
Army Chief overturns Gen V K Singh's decision
Comment:
This makes it clear that Lt Gen Suhag has been cleared of any serious lapse in the matter after reportedly facing allegations of abdication of responsibility with regard to the alleged failed operation. In fact, when Gen VK Singh had ordered the DV ban recently, it had stalled his promotion to the post of General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command. It sounds like the MOD, MHA amd PMO succession plan has taken the right route. We are once again reminded of Nidhi's... refrain "We must look at the bigger picture". This spat between Senior Officers, Arms lobbyists and Politicians will linger on for a long time. With 2014 Elections looming large the Arms Lobbyists are positioning their loyalists for the Big Loot- in the name of Modernisation- the Laundered money goes down the drain as election expenses for the dubious Politicians to get elected again and again and loot repeatedly!

With economy plummeting Planning Commission enhances its peeing ambiance

New Delhi: The Planning Commission has issued a statement in an attempt to explain why it spent 35 lakh rupees on renovating two toilets in its office.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Commission, avoided questions on Wednesday morning about the controversy. The expenditure was revealed by a Right to Information application filed by activist Subhash Agarwal who points out, "Cost of installation of Door Access Control System is Rs. 5,19,426 for two toilets. Cost of renovation of two toilets where door access control system is installed is Rs. 30,00,305."
Social activist Nikhil Dey links that controversial statement to the swanky toilet plan. "There is almost everything that is wrong with what was done and with the justification for it. The Planning Commission represents planning for whom, the poor of the country. And there has been a dispute with their figures because there has been a perception with everyone that within the planning commission they have one standard for the poor and another for the rich. They were placing smart cards for entry into those toilets. That privatizes, reduces the number of those who can use it...it's a huge amount of money and it's that same planning commission that not only decides what the poverty line is but also decides on how much money can be spent on a toilet across the country," he says.
Apart from the poverty line estimates issue, Mr Ahluwalia was also criticized recently after a newspaper reported, based on an RTI reply, that Rs. 2.02 lakh a day was spent by him on foreign travel between May and October, 2011. Another report said that he undertook 42 official trips (between June 2004-January 2011) of 274 days at a cost of Rs. 2.34 crore.
Planning Commission renovates its Rest Rooms for Rs 35 lakhs
Comment: What an irony? An American Bill Gates trying to build cheap toilets for Indian masses and sample Planning Commission's wasteful expenditure of Rs 35 lakhs on one single toilet...
Reinventing a toilet that has an operational cost of $0.05 per user, per day, that does not rely on water to flush waste and does not discharge pollutants is Bill Gates' latest mission. "One of my ultimate dreams now is to reinvent the toilet - find a cheaper alternative to the flush toilet that does not require running water, has smell characteristics better than the flush toilet and is cheap."
Reinventing the toilet is Bill Gates's new mission: click here

BEML Scamster becomes MOD spokesman

BEML serves legal notice on Gen. V.K.Singh; denies charges
A day after Gen V.K. Singh retired as Chief of Army, public sector BEML on Friday slapped a legal notice on him demanding an apology for his “false and motivated” allegations against it on the Tatra truck issue.
“Legal notice has been issued today. If he does not apologise, we may file a defamation suit against Gen V K Singh”, BEML Chairman and Managing Director V.R.S. Natarajan told reporters in Bangalore.
Gen Singh had alleged that he was offered Rs. 14 crore bribe by a former officer to clear supply of a tranche of 600 Tatra trucks into which the CBI is investigating.
“The former Army chief has made some allegations against BEML. As the CEO of the company, I deny them as absolutely false, motivated, damaging and defamatory”, Mr. Natarajan said.
The CBI has registered a Preliminary Enquiry against retired Lt Gen Tejinder Singh on a complaint filed by Singh in which he has alleged that the retired Army officer had offered him the bribe for clearing a ‘sub-standard’ consignment of Tatra trucks.
Mr. Natarajan defended the delay in initiating the process for defamation against Gen. Singh saying the company had to go through the process of seeking legal advice and then placing it before the board for approval.
BEML has not received a single letter that the Tatra vehicles is sub-standard, obsolete or over-priced, Mr. Natarajan said.
BEML serves legal notice on Gen. V.K.Singh>
Comment: MOD is using a corrupt BEML Chairman to settle scores with the Military. This a plot by the IAS lobby whose money laundering opportunity has been severely curtailed. Natarajan is closely linked with MHA and MOD in running benami operations in Bangalore and Hyderabad. The CBI is investigating Natarajan as is evident from media reports. BEML chief using tax payers money to pay its lawyers for the defamation case (the company will be billed Rs 1 crore)... this is a joke!

Adarsh scamsters gang up to gun for Gen VK Singh

MoD bugging row: Tejinder Singh to move Delhi HC against Army chief General VK Singh
Continuing his fight against the outgoing Army chief General V.K. Singh, Lieutenant General (retired) Tejinder Singh would approach the Delhi High Court on May 28, sources said on Friday.
Tejinder claims to be in possession of a sting CD, which according to him would prove allegations he has made. He claims that the CD has evidence that off air interceptors were imported by the military intelligence.
He alleges that it was done at the direct instruction of the Army chief and the equipment was used to bug ministry of defence (MoD) officials and other government VIPs.
Tejinder further says the sting CD would prove that Rs.8 crore was spent on the instruction of the chief of Army staff (COAS) from the Army's secret fund for the purpose. He claimed he would substantiate his allegations with affidavits from two retired generals.
The retired officer would also demand an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into his allegations.
Tejinder had on Thursday suffered a setback after the Delhi High Court refused to direct the Centre to take back a press release of the Army alleging that he had offered a bribe to the Army chief in connection with a defence deal.
Prior to that, on May 10, Tejinder had to withdraw his case against Gen Singh from the Supreme Court wherein he had sought a CBI probe against the Army chief for alleging that he had offered bribe to him.
Read more at: Click here for the original post
Comment: Does Tejinder Singh has a Godfather in MHA for the sting CD? Is the Arms lobby paying the media?

MOD gets screwed by PMO, MHA, MEA, CBI and the Congress Party

Age row: SC judge asked me to 'blow with wind', Gen V K Singh says The writer has posted comments on this articlePTI | May 26, 2012, 08.23PM IST
NEW DELHI: Five days before his controversial 26-month tenure as Army chief comes to an end, Gen V K Singh on Saturday voiced criticism of the defence ministry for "selectively leaking" information to "fix" him.
In a series of interviews to TV channels, the General also made no secret of his unhappiness with the Supreme Court where he lost a legal battle over his age in February. In an apparent reference to a remark by Justice R M Lodha, one of the two judges on the bench that heard his case, the chief said that a very senior apex court judge had told him to "blow with the wind".
"If all of us are going to blow with the wind then we will all become muggers, we will all become corrupt," he said, according to a transcript of his interview released by the Times Now channel.
Justice Lodha had actually remarked, "wise men are those who move with the wind. We take pride in having (an) officer like you. Credit must go to you."
In a separate interview to another TV channel, the Army chief said that he had withdrawn his petition on the age issue because the Supreme Court gave no no decision. "They tried to arbitrate. Then I realised that you are fighting a system."
During the interviews, Singh said it was not not "just lobbies" working against him, but "some people are trying to protect people who are basically doing wrong things."
Turning on the ministry of defence, he said that papers related to his age were "illegitimately" released. Some papers that should never have been released under RTI rules were released and this included a couple of pages which the ministry itself had labelled "top secret".
Asked if he was saying that he had been set up, the General replied, "obviously".
When pressed to state as to who was releasing the information, Singh replied that it was the ministry.
"Absolutely," the General answered when asked whether he was saying that information was being selectively leaked to "fix you".>
Barely concealing his anger over the leakage of his letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh complaining of deficiencies and shortages in the Army, the General said this was a "treasonable act". He then referred to a story, denied by the government, that a joint secretary-level officer in the Cabinet secretariat had been held responsible for the leak.
The General said that PTI does not not "manufacture" stories on its own. "So somebody must have told them, somebody authoritative enough".
The leakage was done "with a purpose to create an impression that Gen V K Singh is leaking it", he said, adding, somebody within the government "had some agenda". Asked if he would get into politics after he demits office on May 31, the chief replied, "I haven't decided anything." Told about the speculation that he may join yoga guru Ramdev, Singh replied " I don't think so. All this is speculative kite flying, to say the least. And I will not go with this kite flying." Referring to his allegation that retired Lt General Tejinder Singh had offered him bribe to clear a deal for Tatra trucks, the Army chief said he had informed defence minister A K Antony as per the services regulations.
Apparently questioning inaction by Antony then, the General said, "He (Antony) has ordered a CBI inquiry. It could have been done earlier."
On inaction on his own part, he said, "If he (Antony) had asked me to take action, action would have been taken. Be rest assured about it."
He, however, went on to add that because of Antony's "blessings" the file regarding the procurement of Tatra trucks was not cleared.
With regard to the controversy over his showcause notice to 3 Corps Commander Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag, the Army chief criticised its leakage and suggested his involvement in it. "Who else will go (to the media)? The notice was signed by me and it is in the name of the officer (Suhag). Who else will handle it?... It was his responsibility to answer that showcause notice.... But without giving an answer, somebody goes to the press and shows the showcause notice," Gen Singh said when asked whether he suspected Suhag of having leaked the notice.
He said it was "morally unacceptable that a notice from a senior officer to a junior officer has found its way into media and started getting discussed".
Gen Singh has since put Suhag, who could head the force in 2014 by the current succession line, on disciplinary and vigilance (DV) ban, by which his promotion would be stalled.
Asked what if the government overturns his decision to put Suhag on DV ban, he said, "it will be government's decision, not mine. People will hold the government responsible for it."
Age row: SC judge asked me to 'blow with wind', Gen V K Singh says Veteran Voice
We laud Gen VK Simgh in attempting to clean up the corrupt system and redeem the image of the armed forces at large. There are scores of corrupt Generals (some retired) who must be brought to book. The arms lobby of India is very powerful they have agents planted in the PMO, MHA, MOD, MEA, Security agencies and many Politicians are in their clutch and speak their voice. Some ESM political organisations are sponsored by the arms lobbyists. Even postings of Senior Officers are affected through lobbyists. The Armed Forces must continue to fight this nexus and menace. One must remember that there are Criminal Politicians who want to win elections at the peril of the nation and the army. Most monies for electioneering is through money laundering cycle through the import of Weapon Systems (accumulated in Swiss and Similar Secret Accounts). The DRDO is a Dodo... The Indian Military is the Sucker always! The scams are too many to narrate here... as 2014 elections near MOD will resort to heavy dose of weapon imports... watch out for more lobbyists and scams...

10-year-old's RTI posers stump PMO

Aishwarya Parashar. Photo: Special Arrangement The Hindu Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar NEW DELHI, May 25, 2012
When some simple questions came to the mind of Aishwarya Parashar, a Class-VI student of the City Montessori School, Lucknow, she did not let them languish unasked. She went seeking out answers through the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Aishwarya's inquisitiveness and willingness to pursue the source of information has yielded, till date, the establishment of a public library on the site of a garbage dump and the nation being better enlightened about the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.
All of just 10 years, Aishwarya is a confident little girl, who herself answers a mobile phone and urges those wanting some written information from her to send her an SMS giving their e-mail ID and even forwards e-mail and communicates about her work on her own.
“I have so far filed three RTIs with the Prime Minister's Office,'' she says, adding that “the first one was [a query] about who gave the order for printing Mahatma Gandhi's image on currency notes. I was told in a reply that it was in 1993 following a meeting of the Reserve Bank of India.”
But it was her subsequent RTI asking the PMO to tell her who conferred the title of Father of the Nation on Mahatma Gandhi, which confounded the government. From the PMO, the query went to the Ministry of Home Affairs and to the National Archives of India, before Aishwarya was told that “there are no specific documents on the information sought” by her.
‘Surprising'
“That was really surprising because I never thought it was such a difficult question since even our history books taught us that Mahatma Gandhi was the Father of the Nation.”
The first reference to Mahatma Gandhi as Father of the Nation goes back nearly 70 years when Subhas Chandra Bose referred to Gandhi thus in a radio address from Singapore in 1944.
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru too had, in his address to the nation upon Mahatma Gandhi's death, referred to him as Father of the Nation: “Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the Father of the Nation, is no more.”
After getting an unsatisfactory answer to her query on this issue in March this year, Aishwarya on April 24 asked the PMO who had declared Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary on October 2 as also Republic Day and Independent Day national holidays. To her surprise, she got a reply dated May 17 that such orders were never issued.
Favourite query
The question most dear to Aishwarya's heart was posed by her in 2009. “That was the time when Lucknow was in the grip of swine flu. There was a big garbage dump near my school, but I only got to see it one day when my mother came to pick me up as my cycle-rickshaw had not come. For the parents there was a separate entrance, and on the way back home I spotted this dump.” With the help of her mother, Urvashi Sharma, who is a social worker and RTI activist, Aishwarya penned an application in her own handwriting. “I had marked that query on the garbage dump to the Chief Minister and thereafter the Uttar Pradesh government got the dump removed, and our school constructed a public library on the site.”
Her father, Sanjay Sharma, is a lecturer.
Ambition
Aishwarya wants to become a doctor. Asked why, she quips: “Whenever I go to a hospital, I see that the poor patients have to first shell out money in order to get treated. I will, on becoming a doctor, go to the slums at least once every week and provide free treatment to such poor people.”
10-year-old's RTI posers stump PMO, Government

Army Line of Succession Trend is Dangerous

“The line of succession has been designed by divine right of General J J Singh... the bureaucrats in the PMO have persisted in this. What is the motivation behind this campaign?”
Former Indian Army Chief Gen JJ Singh worked out plans for Bikram Singh to take over
Thursday, March 15, 2012 Anonymous
M.G. Devasahayam | The Weekend Leader
As is well known, bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a government or organization who are rule-bound and function under institutional norms and standards. Adhocracy operates in opposite fashion and cater more to individual or group agenda rather than functioning under institutional norms and standards.
In the last few years, Indian Administrative Service, the bulwark of India’s bureaucracy, has been mutating itself into an agenda-led adhocracy. This ‘liberalisation’ agenda, co-promoted by Government, Multi-National Corporations and India’s Corporate Sector, include 100 percent FDI by real-estate; land-grab license for SEZ; surrendering tribal forests to mining giants; billions worth of nuclear bonanza and feeble civil liabilities for energy behemoths; ramming GM-cotton and food down people’s throat; mortgaging India’s farming to US interests through ‘Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture’ and ‘Agriculture Cooperation and Food Security’ MoUs; globalizing retail trade and grand entry of foreign universities into India!
This agenda is in vast variance with the ‘growth aspiration’ the country started with at independence. In the vision of the Father of the Nation, Independent India would be sui generis, a society unlike any other, in a class of its own.
Gandhi’s India would not go for gigantic, FDI-funded development projects and large-scale industry and mining, typical of market-led growth under capitalism. Instead, India would pursue an equitable, participatory, small-is-beautiful, need-based, inclusive, balanced development while conserving nature and livelihoods. It is to nurture this socio-economic ethos that IAS was established and covenanted in the constitution.
The present-day neo-liberal agenda is just the opposite, seeking an India of market-making MNCs, millionaires and billionaires, a middle class of 300 million providing that market and the rest of 800 million Indians surviving as barely literate, malnourished multitude. This agenda is being driven by a new breed of adhocracy within the IAS that has come about through inbreeding and rank favouritism.
Ever since UPA government under Manmohan Singh assumed power (2004) two kinds of adhocracy have been shaping up. One was born of the ‘clan-within-clan’ inbreeding being practiced by a ‘linguistic-parochial’ group that at one point of time occupied almost every top-job in Delhi’s corridors of power.
The other is the ‘loyalist-core’ put together to implement the neo-liberal agenda. With the active participation of PMO patriarchs, spread of ‘clan-within-clan’ adhocracy was fast and furious capturing several key positions of ‘might and money’. And barring honourable exceptions, other coveted positions went to agenda-men anointed by the ‘Moneyed and the Mighty’.
Bureaucracy was meant to administer through laid down rules. The ICS was called the steel frame, precisely for this reason. ICS men viewed any deviation from the rules as a misdemeanor. Its successor, the IAS endeavoured to keep up the standards. Though there were hiccups, the bureaucratic system by and large ensured that men/ women with merit were not denied their due place in promotions and postings.
Adhocracy on the other hand is being nurtured through blatant violation of processes and procedures to ensure that the top positions of Government, Joint Secretaries, Additional Secretaries and Secretaries, are held only by the clansmen and their agenda-abiding loyalists. Such adhocracy, which is antonymous to rule-bound bureaucracy, has substantially skewed and compromised the decision making process and standards. The result is for all to see; policy failure in almost all fronts, suffocating corruption and near total collapse of governance.
As if by intent, adhocracy seem to have permeated the Army Headquarters also as it did in the civil citadel. Sometime in 2005, out of the blue, the then Chief of the Army Staff (General JJ Singh) initiated the unique ‘look down policy’ to determine the ‘line of succession’ to the top position in the Army.
He was not looking for immediate succession but was looking deep-down to the year 2012 and found one favourite - Brigadier Bikram Singh. The Chief also realised that events and dates relating to the then Major General VK Singh, who was sure shot to become Army Chief in 2010, needed to be manipulated if Bikram Singh was to succeed him in 2012!
Once this sub-agendum was set, things started moving. Someone in the MS Branch ‘discovered’ VK Singh’s UPSC application form mentioning 1950 as his year of birth and this was the ‘brahmastra’ to be used to truncate and restrict VK Singh’s tenure as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) to a two year period, so that the passage could be cleared for Bikram Singh to take over in May 2012. The massive documentary proof establishing 1951 as General’s YoB was ignored. A dismal charade of seeking ‘acceptance’ of 1950 from VK Singh as his YoB was played out.
But there were more hurdles. At that point of time, this favourite was not a front-runner as there were other officers ahead of him, who needed to be ‘eliminated’ at the COAS’s level itself with a bit of deft manoeuvring. A list was prepared, nick-named ‘Op MOSES’ which implied that the Chief would part the waters like in the ‘Ten Commandments’ for Bikram Singh to smoothly walk through! Like a family tree in reverse, Op MOSES listed few potential threats - Brigadiers and Major Generals of higher calibre - who were dealt with and pushed out one by one either through supersession and non-empanelment! For this purpose even ‘records of service’ were tinkered and tampered with and some even made to disappear.
The fallout of this crude manipulation indulged in by the military adhocracy was the sordid age-row of VK Singh that has rocked the nation. The actual DoB is a matter of record as rightly observed by the Supreme Court. But what is of concern is the manner in which the controversy was first stoked, then fanned and finally, brought into play. This calls for thorough investigation. This is all the more urgent because it is alleged that TKA Nair, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister was behind this brazen manoeuvring. Well before the age controversy came out in the open, Nair is reported to have told his confidants that VK Singh had to go in May 2012 because the ‘Prime Minister had assured his wife that General Bikram Singh would be the next COAS’.
Incidentally this gentleman was the chief mentor of the civil service adhocracy! We have seen the neo-liberal agenda for creating and nurturing the civil adhocracy. But what is the agenda for the military adhocracy? This begs the question. But corruption and carpetbagging could be a possible answer. It is believed that there are IB reports about massive kick-backs in the still-born Eurocopter deal and a top Army brass has reportedly transferred 22 million Euros (Rs. 145 crores) to his relative in Paris through hawala post. But unfortunately for him the deal fell through and he had the consternation of returning the moolah! As if to compensate, this man was rewarded with a coveted civil position with powers to award thousands of crores worth of construction contracts! Now, with huge weapon/equipment purchase deals either being processed or pending in the Army HQ a pliable adhocracy is needed to serve the MNC agenda. With the state turning into a non-functioning kleptocracy, corruption is the common denominator between civil and military adhocracy. Of late we have seen several cases of swindling and misappropriation in which General Officers have been court-martialed and dismissed from service. Many more must be lying buried.
Sensing danger the civil-military adhocracy has combined to hound out General VK Singh who does not fit into the adhocracy mould. Bulk of the media including ‘reputed’ scribes and defense analysts partnered with the kleptocrats in this despicable task, which indeed is the real tragedy!
M.G. Devasahayam is a retired IAS officer, who had served in the Indian army before he joined the civil service. He had taken part in the Indo-Pak War of 1965 and counter insurgency operations in Nagaland. The views expressed in the above article are based on information from his sources in the defence establishment.
Former Indian Army Chief Gen JJ Singh worked out plans for Bikram Singh to take over
Comment: Gen JJ Singh the earlier Chief was rewarded by the Arms Lobby by appointing him Governor... Gen Deepak Kapoor former chief is an ardent worshipper of arms lobbyists unluckily got entangled in the Sukhna and Adarsh Land Scams (still hoping for more)... he has already collected the rewards from various arms dealers... The wheels of Justice is just slowly turning around. TKA Nair was gifted land by BEML to shut his mouth and eyes to Tatra Money Laundering Cycle- He wanted Gen VK Singh to go...PM's close aide TKA Nair caught in land row: click Here... these shameless bureaucrats have made our nation a haven for Money Laundering and Generation of Black Money- signalling to where we are heading.... A Democratic Banana Republic.

Babu shunted for leaking Army Chief's Top Secret Letter

Senior officer leaked army chief's letter to PM
May 13, 2012 21:58 IST
A joint secretary-rank officer in the Cabinet Secretariat has been found guilty of leaking Army Chief General V K Singh's letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [ Images ] about the poor state of preparedness of his force and has been shunted out.
A probe into the leakage by the Prime Minister's Office has also cleared General Singh of any wrongdoing in the episode, highly-placed sources said.
In his letter, the army chief had highlighted the critical shortage of equipment and ammunition in artillery and armoured regiments.
The female officer, belonging to the Indian Economic Service, was handling the charge of intelligence agencies under the Cabinet Secretariat and was nailed after interrogation of some suspected people.
The officer has now been repatriated to her parent cadre and further action can be taken against her for leaking such a sensitive document, sources said.
After the letter surfaced, both the Houses of Parliament were rocked over the issue and certain parties had demanded action against General Singh.
At that time, General Singh had said that incident should be treated as "high treason" and the source of leakage should be dealt with "ruthlessly."
"The leakage of the letter should be treated as high treason. Cynical approach to tarnish my reputation should stop. Sources of the leakage should be found and dealt with ruthlessly," General Singh had said in a statement issued by the army headquarters. Following the incident, the government had asked the Intelligence Bureau to investigate the matter and find out the person responsible for it.
The letter was leaked to the media after General Singh made a sensational disclosure in an interview that he was offered a bribe of Rs 14 crore by a retired lieutenant general for favouring a sub-standard defence deal regarding the purchase of army trucks.

Readers comments sample

apology by aam admi on May 14, 2012 12:15 AM those political leaders, who abused and blamed the General for leaking the letter to Media, should apologise to General VK Singh, if they have left any grace in their behaviour, they should not shout and abuse people of the society in Parliament as and when they wish.This is disgraceful on their part.

by Raghvendra Singhon May 13, 2012 10:37 PM
Time and again it has come to light that General VK Singh has been correct in all his statements and actions. Yet every time there has been biased reporting against him, asking for his head. He has not been allowed to serve for an additional year as is rightfully his due, history will forever remember this. It is a National loss, but he will do his bit for the country in whatever direction Destiny will take him.
Senior officer leaked army chief's letter to PM
Babu shunted for 'leaking' army chief's letter
Army chief letter leak: Cabinet Secretariat officer found guilty
Government's Denial Drama and Dilemma
It's very understandable why the Prime Minister's office and the government is hurriedly issuing a denial because it gives a clean chit to the Army Chief but raises some alarming questions on the government's role behind this Army Chief controversy, and with the Opposition bound to corner the government once again on this, one can understand why the Prime Minister's office wants to step in and issue a denial.
Read More: Click here for the original post
Comment: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is correct when he said "After 60 years we are not a perfect Democracy". What he missed out was that we are fast graduating into a Banana Republic. The treatment meted out to a Patriotic Gen VK Singh by the Government speaks volumes of its gradual graduation!

The Union Cabinet gets healthier and richer by the day

The Hindu P. Sainath P. Sainath

Daily wage labourers are seen outside the office of Planning Commission in New Delhi. A report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector recorded that 836 million Indians live on Rs.20 a day or less. File Photo: V.V. Krishnan

The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get.
Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might be an understated figure since it is based on his own word. Ministers tend to be modest in these matters. But given the official data, the math is inescapable.

In his 2009 poll affidavit, Mr. Patel said his assets were worth over Rs.79 crore. Let's assume he listed all he had up to April 2009, the polls being in May that year. Compare that figure with the more than Rs.122 crore that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) put up against his name online this month. Since this increase occurred in 28 months, my math says that averages over Rs.5 lakh a day. (I can add, though not at the speed of Mr. Patel.)
The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get... Read more of ministers becoming richer by the day
Related Reading
Not poor if you earn Rs. 32 a day: Planning Commission

Government sets up GoM on energy

References
Energy Security = Energy + Security: Pragmatic Euphony
Govt sets up GoM on energy: Indian Express

It seems that those who call such meetings ie PMO do not understand the role of various actors in different facets of National security.
The big problem in India is that the MOD is secluded from Foreign relations. The External Affairs Ministry comprising of bureaucrats of the similar genre as the IAS feel that they are the only ones who know every thing about diplomacy and external relations of India. The reality is far from it and one can see how they have created an image of a weak India who runs to Western countries for a motherly hug when our neighbours inflict wounds on us.
Energy Security has definite and crucial connotations of seaward defence, Air defence, Army's deployment and Homeland defence.
Even the name of the Home Minister is missing!! I suppose HE IS THERE.
Lt Gen Harbhajan Singh (Retd)
Former Signal Officer in Chief

National Security: Chinese hackers target PMO computers

Ashish Khetan, New Delhi, January 14, 2010
Hackers from China have targeted computers in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). Headlines Today has learnt that the sinister attempt was made around December 15 last year. Investigators are still coming to terms with the depth of the damage. The hackers had aimed high - their targets were the cream of India's national security set-up: National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar, PM's Special Envoy Shyam Saran and Deputy National Security Advisor Shekhar Dutt. The four and up to 26 others were squarely in the crosshairs of the hacking attempt.

Top sources told Headlines Today that investigators are trying hard to find out who these hackers were and whether this was a devious espionage attempt by the Chinese government itself. When Headlines Today contacted the PMO regarding the espionage attempt, a spokesperson said no classified information had been breached, but added: "There are routine attempts to hack into various systems. The PMO has its own system in place to protect against such attempts." A top PMO official, whose e-mail account was cracked by the Chinese hackers, confirmed the espionage bid, saying: "These kind of hacking attempts are made. To think they are not made is wrong. The internet or intranet is not used for official purposes."

According to Bharat Karnad, a strategic affairs analyst, "China wants war by all means. It doesn't believe in peacetime. For China, it's always rivals, always competition." Pavan Duggal, chairman of Cyber Law and IT Act Committee, says: "China is very active in cyberspace. It has raised a cyber army of about 3,00,000 people and their only job is to intrude upon secured networks of other countries. All this is all aimed at supremacy. Every country must set up cyber armies to counter China."

R.S.N. Singh, a former RAW officer, says: "China wants to dominate and control this space. This cyber army has soldiers not in uniform but anybody and everybody, maybe college students. It's very serious as cyber warfare can bring a country to a crippling halt." The timing of the espionage attempt has investigators suspecting that the Chinese hackers were desperately trying to access any data on India's position at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. Until Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Copenhagen on December 17, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and PM's Special Envoy Shyam Saran were singing different tunes. While Ramesh was in favour of scrapping the Kyoto Protocol, Saran was against the move.

On December 15 when India's final stand was still shrouded in mystery, the Chinese hackers targeted the PMO computers. But what has disturbed investigators the most is that the Chinese hackers quite likely had inside help. The possibility of a mole within the Indian establishment helping a foreign adversary is staring investigators in the face. And the technology being used is preoccupying the Indian sleuths no end.

The espionage attempt was highly evolved and well-researched. The mail was routed through several multi-proxy servers thus obliterating the trail. The hacking spyware itself was embedded in a PDF document. And the trojan was programmed to carry out an array of functions, including downloading files, accessing emails and passwords and also accessing the desktop from a remote location.
Chinese hackers target PMO computers