NEW DELHI, April 18: The Vice-Chief of the Army Staff Lt Gen Manoj Pande has been appointed as the 29th Chief of Army Staff. He will be the first officer from Corps of Engineers to head the 1.3 million Indian Army.
He will take over on April 30 when the incumbent Gen Manoj Naravane is set to retire and is tipped to be appointed the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) which is lying vacant since the untimely demise of the first CDS Gen Bipin Rawat who was killed in a helicopter crash in December, last year. Naravane presently is the senior-most officer fitted for the post of the CDS, official sources said.
The tenure of Service Chiefs is 62 years of age or three years whichever is earlier while the age limit for the Chief of Defence Staff is 65 years of age with no fixed tenure defined.
Lt Gen Pande was commissioned in December 1982 into the Corps of Engineers (The Bombay Sappers). He took over as Vice Chief on February 1 and prior to that was the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command. From June 1 till January 31 he served as the 15th Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman & Nicobar Command (CINCAN). So far all the Army Chiefs have been from the fighting arms – infantry, artillery and armoured.
Lt Gen Pande is a graduate of Staff College, Camberley (United Kingdom) and attended the Higher Command Course at Army War College, Mhow and National Defence College (NDC) at Delhi. He was posted as Chief Engineer at the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
He commanded an Engineer Regiment along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, 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 North East.
(Manas Dasgupta)
