Army's new promotion policy to restrict postings

The Indian Army's new promotion policy restricts officers of the rank of Major General and Lieutenant General, to handle either administrative duties or lead troops in operational formations.Under the policy, staff stream officers will perform only administrative tasks, while command stream officers will get to lead troops in field formations.

Officers in the respective streams would, however, get no opportunity to change streams while moving up the career ladder. Also, the promoted officer would be allotted a stream on a pro-rata basis keeping in view the availability of staff and command posts at any given point of time. According to the new policy, a Major General, once selected into staff stream, would take up posts such as Chiefs of Staff of a Corps or a Command Headquarters, or head an Area Headquarters, which are administrative posts.

The new policy coming into effect on the basis of recommendations made by the Ajai Vikram Singh Committee. The Indian Army has created 75 additional Major General posts and 20 Lieutenant General posts as per the recommendations of the committee in December last year.

The policy was first implemented for 15 Major Generals, who were promoted to Lieutenant General rank in January this year.The new policy, which was adopted by the Army was first mooted in 1980 by former army chief General K.Sundarji.