Sudhi Ranjan Sen

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : India will have theatre commands overseeing the country’s borders with China in the North/North-east; Pakistan in the North/West; and a peninsular command looking at the country’s eastern and western seaboards, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat said in an interaction with reporters on Tuesday. While this will take three years, he added that the country’s armed forces are poised for the biggest reorganisation ever with the creation of the “Air Defence Command.”

“The Air Defence Command is low-hanging fruit,” General Rawat said, adding that “during the transition, the theatre commanders will be assigned to be under the service chief” so that the change doesn’t impact the battle capabilities of the forces.

This means that during the transition, the theatre commander will take orders from his service chief, who will take inputs from the other chiefs. The new structure that will emerge after the transition process is still not clear. “The process of transition will be deliberate and gradual,” General Rawat, India’s first CDS, said.

And with the creation of the peninsula command, the Navy Chief can disinvest himself from the closer Indian Ocean region and look at the bigger picture, the CDS said. “Our thought process is that let us go with the peninsula command. Currently there is East and West command in Navy over Indian Ocean,” he said. “If you look at the Navy Chief, these two commands are just one of his charters. Look at his charter; he is looking at the entire Indian Ocean region. He is looking from east coast of Africa to right down to Australia,” he said.

General Rawat was named CDS on December 31, 2019.