Lt Gen Manoj Pande named new army chief
NEW DELHI: Lieutenant General Manoj Pande will take over as the next army chief on April 30, the defence ministry announced on Monday, with General Manoj Mukund Naravane set to complete his term on that date.
Pande, who is serving as the vice chief, will be the first officer from the Corps of Engineers, also known as sappers, to hold the top position. Officers from the sappers have served as army commanders and vice chiefs, but never held the army chief’s position.
Born on May 6, 1962, Pande will serve as army chief for more than two years. Service chiefs end their term after three years of service or when they turn 62, whichever is earlier. Pande will take over as the army’s 29th chief at a time when India is working on a road map for the military’s theaterisation to best utilise the resources of the three services for future wars and operations, and when the country is caught in a lingering border row with China.
His appointment also comes at a time when indigenisation of military hardware is the government’s top priority and military planners are assessing the impact of the Russia-ukraine war on India’s military preparedness as two-thirds of the country’s military equipment is of Soviet or Russian-origin.
India’s first chief of defence staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who was killed in a helicopter crash last December, was spearheading the theaterisation drive. The government is yet to appoint a successor.
The government has gone by seniority in naming Pande as the next chief as he is currently the
senior-most officer in the army after Naravane. In the past, the government has selected new service chiefs from a panel of top officers and overlooked seniority.
For instance, the government superseded two top generals — Lieutenant Generals Praveen Bakshi and PM Hariz — to appoint General Rawat as army chief on December 31, 2016.
Before assuming the charge of vice chief on February 1, Pande was heading the Kolkata-based Eastern Command that is responsible for guarding India’s borders with China in the eastern sector.
His tenure saw the army deploy new weapon systems in the eastern sector to strengthen its posture against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), amid the lingering border row in Ladakh.
An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Pande was commissioned into the Corps of
Engineers (The Bombay Sappers) in December 1982. He commanded an engineer regiment during Operation Parakram in the Pallanwala Sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.
Operation Parakram, the largescale mobilisation of troops and weapons to the western border, followed the 2001 terror attack on Parliament that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
In his 39-year military career, Pande has commanded an engineer brigade in the western theatre, infantry brigade along LOC, a mountain division in the Ladakh sector and a corps in the northeast. He was the commander-inchief of Andaman and Nicobar Command before he took charge of Eastern Command. He has undergone courses at Staff College, Camberley (UK), Army War College, Mhow and National Defence College, New Delhi.