Wednesday 25 April 2012

Lt Gen Bikram Singh's appointment as COAS

Supreme Court has rightly thrown out the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the appointment of Lt. Gen. Bikram Singh as the next Chief of Army staff, which was downright communal and completely baseless. Its a pity that very learned and honorary people like like former Chief of Naval Staff L Ramdas and former Chief Election Commissioner, N Gopalaswami were among the petitioners and played at the hands of communal forces active in our country. 


BJP & RSS are the most frustrated lot after second successive defeat at the hands of the Congress and so they are very strategically trying to create an issue out of everything that Congress Govt at the centre does. This PIL against the appointment of Lt. Gen Bikram Singh was the most recent attempt in that direction.


 This is very clear from the Communal Tone of the PIL and the reasons given to oppose this appointment. The Honorable RSS Petitioners dragged Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) and former Army Chief JJ Singh into the row. They had alleged that the SGPC had lobbied for Bikram Singh's elevation, while the succession plan for ensuring his appointment to the top post had been put in place way back in 2005 when JJ Singh was the Army Chief.


One fails to understand how come SGPC all of sudden became so powerful and influential after 65 yrs of independence that it could lobby and get its man appointed as COAS and that too when Akalis themselves are anti- Congress and have coalition government with BJP? 


Secondly, what mechanism that Gen JJ Singh put in place in 2005 that even after 7 years, his thoughts came to reality? Did he pass any such orders, signed by him, that could not be violated even after 7 years? Sheer nonsense. How could JJ Singh's plans be so powerful that no other Army office dared to oppose that even after 7 years and all silently accepted the appointment of Lt. Gen. Bikram Singh over them when they themselves were more competent?


Petitioners claimed that they had challenged Singh's appointment on two grounds - 


First, a case was pending in the J&K High Court about his alleged role in a fake encounter in 2001.


Secondly, a Court of Inquiry was on into the reported excess committed by the Indian forces in congo in 2007 when Singh was commander of the UN Peacekeeping Force in that country.


Court's stand on first allegation-  No way could the 2001 encounter be fake as Bikram Singh himself had suffered a gunshot injury in the incident and remained hospitalised for two months.


Quoting Major Navdeep Singh (his blog - http://www.indianmilitary.info/), he personally knew two of the officers present in the incident - Late Col J P Janu, commanding a Territorial Army Battalion and the other was Late Lieutenant Bikramjit Bajwa. While Col Janu lost his life, Lt Bajwa lost his limbs in the same incident.


May be the petitioners feel that Lt. Gen Bikram Singh conducted the fake encounter, got himself shot and then killed Col Janu and also managed to attack Lt. Bajwa. This renders me speechless.


If the petitioners are so much concerned about human rights violations, they may kindly visit Kashmir, see the list of cases pending and start working on them. Would they dare to do that?
Did they ever file any PIL against Gujarat CM Narendra Modi for organizing an anti-Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat and killing innocent people? How would Mr. Gopalaswami do that when he himself is a Gujarat cadre IAS officer? BJP was the only party to support the then Chief Election Commissioner Mr N Gopalaswami’s decision to recommend the removal of Commissioner Mr Navin Chawla barely three months before the CEC retired. After the Shah Commission’s indicted Mr. Chawla, he should not have been in public service. But the BJP did not object to his postings until 2005, including important ones under its own rule. It raked up the  issue when the Mr. Gopalaswami took action, to despicably self-serving ends. (http://www.sacw.net/article671.html - India: Cultural Aggression in The Name of Hindutva).


 This PIL was purely communal and was filed at the behest of RSS and BJP with two motives - One was not find a fault and wrong- intention in all what Congress does and second was to create an Anti-Sikh sentiment and stop a Sikh from becoming the Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army. Both these motives led to the basic or final goal- misguide the Hindu majority by creating sentiments against other communities and Congress and win the next elections.

1 comment:

  1. Why do you contradict yor Mr Gurpreet Singh, you blast BJP to be behind the PIL and also says BJP is in power with Akali Dal - decide which is true and which is fiction, for us readers you are a Congress stooge

    ReplyDelete