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After testing times, Dalbir Singh Suhag takes over

Last Updated 31 July 2014, 19:50 IST

India’s new Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag and his family had to go through “testing times” and face “ordeals” in recent years, perhaps due to the intense controversy surrounding his appointment as Army chief.

“In recent years, the family did go through testing times. But that ordeal only made the family bond much stronger and resolute,” says a press statement issued by the defence ministry after Gen Suhag was handed over the baton by his predecessor, Gen Bikram Singh.

Former Army Chief Gen (retd) V K Singh, who is currently a junior minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, made several attempts to block Gen Suhag’s appointment, though the UPA and NDA governments had selected the senior-most officer as the Army chief.

The former chief threw a spanner first by imposing a discipline and vigilance ban on Gen Suhag for his failure in “command and control” in a botched-up 2011 intelligence operation. The ban was lifted only when Gen Bikram Singh became the Army chief.

Even after Suhag was cleared by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet and Defence Minister Arun Jaitley refused to reverse his predecessor A K Antony’s decision, Singh continued to criticise Gen Suhag“Well-wishers of the family and old friends who have known them for decades believed that insinuations would never stick. Today, they all stand vindicated,” said the  press statement that captures Suhag’s journey that started from a small village in Jhajhar district of Haryana.

He is the third Army Chief after Gen S H F J Manekshaw  and Gen G G Bewoor, to be commissioned into the Brigade of Gorkhas. Gen Suhag was commissioned on June 1974 into 4/5 Gorkha Rifles .

Gen Suhag served in Operation Pawan, India’s gory and troubled peacekeeping operations in Sri Lanka. Later, he commanded a Rashtriya Rifles battalion in Nagaland, an infantry brigade in the Kashmir Valley and a mountain division (8 Div) in the Kargil-Drass sector.

In his four-decade military career, he served under the Cabinet Secretariat as an Inspector General, Special Frontier Force, an elite team for undercover operations. He also served as Corps commander (3 Corps in Dimapur), Eastern Army Commander and the Vice-Chief of the Army.

“Suhag, incidentally is indeed his surname and although not averse to being addressed as such, it may only be prudent to address the General by his duly listed name — Dalbir Singh,” said the press statement.

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(Published 31 July 2014, 19:50 IST)

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