On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the appointment of Chief of Defence Staff – a person who will be above the three Service Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
The case being provided for the appointment of a CDS is simple – the need for a single-point person as an advisor to the government. With Service Chiefs occupied in their operational roles, the CDS will be responsible for an overall long term planning, optimising procurement of the three services and ensuring that high-level decisions are taken consensually. According to The Hindu, the defence ministry will finalise a CDS in a few months. But this is not the first time such an idea has been floated.
The proposal for the appointment of a CDS in India was first made after the Kargil war in 2001, by the Group of Ministers constituted in the aftermath, but no consensus emerged because of apprehensions within the three services. The Ministry of Defence also opposed the proposal because of bureaucratic reasons; citing that most powers will get concentrated in a CDS’s post.
Currently, India has a chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC). The senior most among the three services is appointed as such. The office of the CoSC is not directly responsible for providing joint military advice to the government. This is at present done by the National Security Advisor which makes the office of CoSC quite ineffective. It also lapses with the Chairman’s retirement. The current Chairman of CoSC is Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, but he will retire on September 30 and would have served as Chairman for merely four months.
The baton for the post of the Chairman of CoSC was likely to have passed on to General Bipin Rawat, the next senior most service personnel after ACM Dhanoa. But it is being widely speculated that General Bipin Rawat will hold the post of India’s first CDS instead.
General Rawat is seen as somebody with vast experience in counter-insurgency operations in the northeast and in Jammu and Kashmir. He was also the Chief of Army when the Narendra Modi led government carried out surgical strikes against Pakistan after the attack in Uri.