Saturday, February 28, 2009

2 Major-Generals face corruption charges

NEW DELHI: In yet indicator of the declining standards of probity and discipline in the armed forces, two Major-Generals from the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) are now in the dock for their alleged acts of commission and omission.

Both the Maj-Gens are facing courts of inquiry (CoI), which will establish whether there is enough prima facie evidence to try them through court martial, in separate cases.

The first, Maj-Gen Anand Swaroop, officiating commandant of College of Materials Management (Jabalpur), is facing charges of irregularities in purchase of items for a unit headed for a UN peace-keeping mission.

The second, Maj-Gen S P Sinha, ordnance chief at the Western Army Command at Chandimandir, in turn, is accused of irregularities in purchase of general stores for ordnance depot at Choeki. Both officers, on their part, have refuted the charges against them.

This comes after the case of yet another senior AOC officer, Maj-Gen A K Kapur, who is facing a CBI probe after raids led to the discovery of property worth around Rs 5.3 crore in his or his family's name in late-2007. The CBI, however, is yet to file a chargesheet in the case.

With the three seniormost AOC officers facing corruption charges, even if they have not been proved so far, the post of director-general of ordnance services at the Army HQ continues to remain vacant.

Both AOC and Army Service Corps (ASC) have been embroiled in such controversies in recent years, with senior officers jostling for top posts, often levelling accusations against each other.

The ASC, for instance, witnessed a bout of controversy some time ago with two Lt-Gens, S K Sahni and S K Dahiya, also having to face legal proceedings. The names of Sahni, Dahiya, four Maj-Gens, nine Brigadiers, a Navy Commodore, two Commanders, a Lt-Commander, an IAF Group Captain and a Coast Guard DIG had figured in a list of 21 senior officers facing corruption charges tabled by defence minister A K Antony in Parliament.

The corruption charges ranged from selling military liquor in civilian markets to financial bungling in purchase of cereals, petrol and the like in the armed forces.

A Maj-Gen had faced the music for even sexual harassment last year. The court martial against Maj-Gen A K Lal, who was removed as commander of the strategically-located 3 Infantry Division at Leh in September 2007 after a woman officer accused him of "misconduct'' and "misbehavior'', held that he should be dismissed from service.

Many of these officers, including Maj-Gen Lal, however, have appealed in high courts against the court martial verdicts against them.

Monday, February 2, 2009

India a sponge protecting US: Ashley Tellis tells US Senate

On a hearing held on January 28, 2009 by the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs summarizes the testimony of Ashley Tellis, strategic affairs expert and an influential policy adviser, as follows:

QUOTE:
India has become the "sponge" that was protecting the United States and the West from the terror campaign of Lashkar-e-Tayiba and is absorbing most of the blows unleashed by terrorist groups in Pakistan.

LeT, which has been blamed for the Mumbai attacks, remains a terrorist organisation of genuinely global reach and represents a threat to regional and global security, second only to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.

Tellis, a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, made these remarks while testifying before the Senate committee on homeland security and governmental affairs on Wednesday on the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai and their consequences for the US.

"India has unfortunately become the sponge that protects us all. India's very proximity to Pakistan, which has developed into the epicenter of global terrorism during the last 30 years, has resulted in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist groups that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United States, and the West more generally," he said.

Tellis said the Barack Obama administration should keep Pakistan's feet to the fire and ensure that Islamabad makes good on its promises to take on terrorist groups.

Washington should also demand more of Islamabad precisely because the LeT threatens to become a significant global terrorist threat, he said, adding, the US should insist that Islamabad roll up and eliminate the entire LeT infrastructure of terrorism that currently exists inside of Pakistan.

Tellis also termed India's response to the Mumbai attack as inadequate and suggested that New Delhi should set up a body on the lines of America's national counter-terrorism centre and take US help.

Tellis said since the launch of the global war on terror post 9/11, Inter-Services Intelligence's assistance to LeT has become more recessed but it has by no means ended, even though the organisation was formally banned by then Pakistans president Pervez Musharraf on January 12, 2002.

Throwing light on LeT's links with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence, Tellis said the terror group has received strong financial, material, and operational support from Pakistan's powerful spy agency -- including from its field stations in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh -- because of the growing conviction within the Pakistan military that the war against India could never be won if the hostilities were to be confined only to Jammu and Kashmir issue .

While India has occupied the lion's share of LeT attention in recent years, he said the organisation has not by any means restricted itself to keeping only India in its sights.

LeT was from the very beginning a preferred ward of the ISI, enjoying all the protection offered by the Pakistani state, he added. Even when Pakistan, under considerable US pressure, formally banned LeT as a terrorist organization in 2002, the LeT leadership remained impregnable and impervious to all international political pressure.

Tellis said it would be a gross error to treat the terrorism facing India, including the terrible recent atrocities as simply a problem for New Delhi alone.

In a very real sense, the outrage in Mumbai was fundamentally a species of global terrorism not merely because the assailants happened to believe in an obscurantist brand of Islam but, more importantly, because killing Indians turned out to be simply interchangeable with killing citizens of some 15 different nationalities for no apparent reason whatsoever.
UNQUOTE.

To watch and listen to the hearings. please click: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=4bad8b13-1ed8-4ea4-8ed7-0c020c6205f4

(It takes some time for the video to start).

For the text of Ashley Tellis's prepared testimony. please click: http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/012809Tellis.pdf