NEW DELHI, April 30: General Manoj Pande on Saturday took charge as the 29th Chief of the Army Staff succeeding General Manoj Naravane who retired from service. Pande became the first army chief from the Corps of Engineers to head the 1.3 million Army. With his taking over, all the three Service Chiefs are now from the 61st Course of the National Defence Academy (NDA).
The government is, however, yet to appoint the next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the post which has fallen vacant following the death of the country’s first CDS General Bipin Rawat in a chopper crash in December. General Naravane is tipped to be appointed the CDS.
Gen Pande was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers (The Bombay Sappers) in December 1982. He took over as Vice Chief on February 01 and prior to that was the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command, from June 1, 2021. From June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021 he served as the 15th Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman & Nicobar Command (CINCAN).
Gen. Pande is a graduate of the Staff College, Camberley (United Kingdom) and attended the Higher Command Course at the Army War College, Mhow and the National Defence College (NDC) in Delhi. He was posted as Chief Engineer at the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The General has commanded 117 Engineer Regiment during Operation Parakram in the Pallanwala Sector of Jammu and Kashmir, along the Line of Control (LoC). He commanded an Engineer Regiment along the LoC, an Engineer Brigade as part of the Strike Corps, an Infantry Brigade along the LoC, a Mountain Division in high-altitude area of western Ladakh and a Corps deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) as also in counter-insurgency operations area in the northeast. Gen. Pande is also The Colonel Commandant of The Bombay Sappers.
(Manas Dasgupta)
