House panel okays bill on disciplinary powers to inter-services organisation chiefs

India’s plan to set up integrated theatre commands received a subtle push on Friday with a panel of MPs giving the green signal to legislation that will allow the Commander-in-Chief of inter-services organisation to take disciplinary actions against men and women from other services serving under his command.

Though the Inter-Services Organisation (Command, Control and Discipline) Bill 2023 per se wouldn’t lead to the creation of theatre commands, it sets the stage for forming such a military architecture by permitting the heads of the inter-services organisations to exercise command, control and discipline on all personnel of the army, air force and navy, governed by three separate laws.

When the Air Force Act, 1950; the Army Act 1950 and the Navy Act, 1957 were enacted, there were no inter-services organisations. But currently, several such units like the Andaman and Nicobar Command, Strategic Forces Command and Defence Space Agency as well as joint training establishments like the National Defence Academy and National Defence College are functional.

For the officers heading these organisations, there are challenges pertaining to disciplinary and administrative actions on service personnel posted in an ISO as they need to be reverted to their parent service units for any disciplinary or administrative action instituted against them.

This entails the movement of the delinquent persons and the witnesses in the case to their respective Commands/Headquarters. The process is time-consuming, delays the justice process and leads to the loss of precious man-hours.

The proposed law seeks to address such problems once tri-service units are recognised by the Centre as an ISO. For instance, the Andaman and Nicobar Command has still not been notified as an ISO even 22 years after its formation.

Deposing before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, defence ministry officials said when theatre commands would be formed, they would check if the provisions of the ISO bill could be extended to those over-arching commands where assets and troops from all three services would be kept under a single three-star officer.

With India currently having 17 single service commands (Army-7, IAF-7 and Navy-3), the principal task of former Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat was to form integrated theatre commands. His untimely death slowed down the process, which picked up speed in recent months under the new CDS Gen Anil Chauhan.

The Standing Committee chaired by BJP leader Jual Oram agreed with the provisions of the bill and recommended that it be passed without any amendments and enacted as a statute.