The Army’s Director General of Military Operations, Lt. Gen. B.S. Raju, has been appointed the next Vice Chief of the Army Staff. He will take over on May 1, 2022, the Army said in a statement.
The current Vice Chief, Lt. Gen. Manoj Pande is set to take over as the next Army Chief on April 30 from incumbent Gen. Manoj Naravane.
This is a rare instance where a three star officer will be first taking over as Vice Chief before serving tenure as an Army Commander.
As a practice in the Army, Vice Chiefs have for a long time been those who had already served as Army Commander. However, Lt. Gen. Raju will be taking first as Vice Chief and is expected to proceed as Army Commander later this year, an official stated.
Very few instances
There have been very few such instances in the past, another official said. One such instance was former Army Chief Gen. S. F. Rodrigues. He was Vice Chief of the Army Staff from November 1987 to April 1989 and then took over as Central Army Commander from April 1989 to October 1989 and as Western Army Commander from November 1, 1989 to June 30, 1990. He served as Chief of the Army Staff from 1990 to 1993, and retired on June 30, 1993.
Lt. Gen. Baggavalli Somashekar Raju is an alumnus of Sainik School Bijapur and National Defence Academy. He was commissioned in the JAT Regiment on December 15, 1984. He commanded his battalion during ‘Operation Parakram’ in the Western theatre and in Jammu and Kashmir. He also holds the distinction of commanding the Uri brigade along the Line of Control, a Counter-Insurgency Force and the 15 Corps in the Kashmir Valley. The General Officer also served as the Commandant, Indian Military Training Team in Bhutan.
The General officer is a qualified helicopter pilot having carried out operational flying in Somalia, as part of UNOSOM-II. He is also the Colonel of the JAT Regiment.
Lt. Gen. Raju did his National Defence College (NDC) at Royal College of Defence Studies, United Kingdom.
