Over 20 senior Army officers of the rank of major-general have been cleared for promotion to the rank of lieutenant-general by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh under the current two-stream promotion policy followed by the Army, defence sources confirmed on Wednesday evening.
The two stream-policy segregates senior Army officers into staff and command streams. The Army top brass wants to change the policy and go back to the single-stream policy that it followed before 2009 but well-placed defence sources have indicated that there could be several legal hurdles and complications that may prevent the government from according permission for this to the Army. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had sought legal opinion on this.
Staff positions refer to administrative duties while command positions refers to the command of various Army corps and commands (for lieutenant generals) and divisions (for major generals). Sources said the Army is keen on the single-stream policy wherein all its general-rank officers would be eligible for command positions. Under the existing two-stream policy, officers selected for staff positions cannot aspire to command the Indian Army’s divisions, corps and commands.
The Indian Army top brass is keen that this segregation in streams be done away with on the grounds that this is leading to anguish among some of its top officers who were selected in the Staff stream in the past two years. But the MoD had wanted to know why the Army wants to go back on a promotion policy introduced just two years ago. During the tenure of the previous Army Chief Gen. Deepak Kapoor, the Army had decided to introduce the current two-stream policy which was made effective from January 1, 2009.