An Army inquiry into the Darjeeling land scam, has recommended “termination of services” of Lt Gen Avadhesh Prakash, Military Secretary at Army HQ and one of the seniormost Generals, and court martial proceedings against Lt Gen P K Rath. The inquiry also favoured disciplinary action and court martial against Major General P Sen and administrative action against Lt Gen Ramesh Halgali, currently commanding the 11 Corps. A separate inquiry has also been recommended against a Colonel of the legal department for giving dubious advice regarding the land deal.
The recommendation for termination of services of Prakash were given by Eastern Army Commander, Lt Gen V K Singh, on the basis of the court of inquiry findings and opinion by the Army’s legal department. While the recommendations have been forwarded by the Eastern Army command, the onus for action against Lt Gen Prakash, who is one of the seven Principal Staff Officers (PSO) at Army HQ, now lies with Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor.
The Army Chief, now has the choice to accept the recommendations and terminate Lt Gen Prakash’s services who is slated to retire on 31st January 2010, or overrule the matter on sound legal grounds.If the recommendation is accepted, Lt Gen Prakash can either accept dismissal or face court martial proceedings where he can contest the charges against hi.
The news on the block that is yet to hit hard Lt Gen Prakash is, the unearthing of another scam regarding misappropriation of Regimental Funds as I have already detailed in the last posts during his days in Kumaon Regiment.
The man with the deepest sense of grief and profound debilitating situation is now Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor who holds the onus to the outcome of this scam and expected to raise the flag high for the Nation at the same time, forgetting all the close ties left behind with the decision he takes.
Nation is Watching , so are the decision makers and takers.
While the original case pertains to Illegal NOC's (No Objection Certificates) granted to an educational institution for transfer of land near 33 Corps HQ in Sukhna, a probe has brought to light that the same institution was allegedly in negotiations to purchase another chunk of land belonging to the Ranikhet-based Kumaon Regimental Centre in Uttarakhand. The Educational Institution — comprising four firms JFLow and Company Ltd, Sheetala Vyapar Pvt Ltd, Mata Vaishnodevi Mercantile Pvt Ltd and Akshara Vanijya Pvt Ltd — was in talks to purchase land in Uttarakhand for supposedly opening a school. The sale was halted after an inquiry was launched into the Darjeeling fraud.
The Kumaon Regimental Centre is under the shadow of Army land scam case in which same Educational Institution was close to purchasing regimental land in Uttrakhand under the garb of starting a school posing as an affiliate of the Mayo College in Ajmer. The name of Lt Gen Awdhesh Prakash is in limelight in Darjeeling land scam case too.The Army top brass has been rocked by another controversy and inquiry being ordered into alleged irregularities in the construction of a War Memorial and Renovation of a Museum at the Ranikhet-based Kumaon Regimental Centre.
Brigadier Bhupinder Singh, who was heading the centre, has been attached to the Lucknow-based Central Command for the inquiry into charges of diverting funds for the museum and memorial against the norms, the probe has also brought Lt Gen Avadhesh Prakash under the scanner.The inquiry is looking into the role of the (then Colonel) of the Kumaon Regiment (now) Lt Gen Awdhesh Prakash for allegedly sanctioning funds to the tune of Rs 1 crore for the museum and memorial against the norms. The inquiry commenced in Lucknow under a Major General, is looking into allegations that the Regimental centre concealed from Central Authorities that it had received funds of over Rs 80 lakh from the Cultural Department to construct the Museum in violation of procedures.Another charge being probed is that over Rs 30 lakh was allegedly taken out from the Welfare funds of the Regimental Centre—funds that are earmarked for the welfare of ex-servicemen—to construct the Museum and Memorial.
The promotion of Brigadier Bhupinder Singh, (who had been approved for the rank of a Major General) has been put on hold pending Inquiry. Army officials defending the decision to grant sanctions for the museum said the funds were utilised “as per the Standing Operating Procedure” and “proper sanctions” were given. The inquiry was ordered after the Central Command discovered that the massive amount of funds had been sanctioned without its approval. According to Sources the contract for the design and construction of the war memorial was given to the daughter of a serving General, again in a violation of norms and no open tender was invited by the regimental centre.
On Oct 30th 2009 Defence Minister A K Antony asked Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar to order an inquiry into the case that has brought the seniormost Army officers under the scanner. The Ministry Inquiry will be separate from the Court of Inquiry (CoI) that has been convened by the Army.Apart from Mother India, Indian Army is in worship to other Gods like Kuber and Laxmi and the list ranges and variates with the Arm they are serving with. These officers in Indian Army are somewhat trying to prove at its best that :
"THEY CAN DO ANYTHING FOR THESE GODS AND GODDESSES".
Epilogue:
Forget the supposed evidence , phone records, statement by the real estate developer comparing the indicted General to God, Attempts to deflect attention by involving the West Bengal government by filing defamation case against it by Gen Awdhesh and the statement by a General Rath's brother drawing the Army Chief and the Eastern Army Commander into the controversy.
First the Army PRO tried to dowse the speculative fires about the land scam at Sukhna but to little avail. Then the Army Chief publicly turned defensive about the whole finger-pointing business. Then he has also tried to contact friendly opinion makers to control the damage emanating from this incident with some of the folks who are already at work in the national media batting for the army.
The incidents may differ but the questions will remain the same.
One is about having Zero Tolerance towards any corruption in the armed forces.
Second, and the more important one, is about the excuses being furnished that mean little except delaying the inevitable.
Defence Minister Mr. AK Antony is not a man of accomodation with such incidences in Army with very soft hand as he has proved it time and again earlier.
There is a call for hour --- A systemic plan to reform and restructure the defence services.
The cat is again out of the bag, three Top Army Generals are again in the news for all the bad reasons Army would like to shy away from. But democracy is giving everybody chance to defend themselves and it is yet to be established as to how and when these officers, the so called Top Eight Generals of Indian Army and Advisors to Chief of Indian Army would be inflicted by these reasons alone surviving such defence. The three Generals will now face the sack orders.
In the major embarrassment to the Army The list of new celebrities of Indian Army goes like this:
Lt. Gen Awdhesh Prakash, Military Secretary, Indian Army,
Lt Gen. Ramesh Halgali, Commander 11 Corps , Jalandhar,
Lt Gen. P.K. Rath, Deputy Chief Designate,
Maj. Gen P.Sen (then Brigadier), and
Two Colonels who were grilled at COI (Court of Inquiry).
Lt. Gen. Prakash is currently posted as Military Secretary at the army headquarters in Delhi. Lt Gen Rath was all set to go to the Army Headquarters as Deputy Chief but his posting has been kept in abeyance pending the probe.
The court of enquiry has found Lt. Gen. Awadesh Prakash, "blameworthy", said an official, not divulging further details of the findings of the report.
An Army Court of Inquiry (COI) headed by Tezpur-based 4 Corps Commander Lt Gen K T Parnaik has indicted Military Secretary Lt Gen Awadhesh Prakash and Lt Gen P K Rath for their role in issuing a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) to a private establishment that falsely claimed to be establishing an affiliate of the famed Ajmer-based Mayo College. (It is noteworthy here that preliminary Army probe had revealed that the institution had no connection with Mayo College, the premise under which the NOC was issued.)
The Army is tight-lipped about the deal. Lt. Gen Prakash agreed to give away the Army land on long lease to a private educational firm though the earlier Commanders had rejected the proposal on security reasons as an Army helipad is close by. A no objection certificate is mandatory for sale of land adjacent to military stations due to security reasons. According to sources Gen Prakash was promised a plum post by the private company after his retirement.
The Court of Inquiry into the Darjeeling land scam case has brought out that a Siliguri real estate developer Dilip Agarwal and Lt General Awdhesh Prakash were in constant touch while a dubious Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was being drafted to clinch the land deal.
However, an army projection in December 2008 had highlighted that the land - located near the 33 Corps headquarters in Sukhna - be acquired by the army for security reasons.
The CoI has established through phone records that real estate developer Dilip Agarwal, who inked the MoU to obtain No Objection Certificates from the Army for 71 acres near the 33 Corps HQ in Sukna Cantonment, was in constant touch with Lt Gen Avadhesh Prakash, Military Secretary (MS) at Army HQ, while the deal was being sealed.
While Lt Gen Prakash did not have a direct role in granting the NOCs, the CoI has brought out that he used his influence as one of the senior most officers in the Army to ensure that the deal went through.
Lt Gen Prakash had 'coerced' Lt Gen Rath to strike the deal. Since Gen Prakash was Incharge of promotions and other matters, Gen Rath agreed to the deal.
The case, which is turning out to be a big 300+ Crore scandal involving top Army officers, unravelled after it came to light that a massive land deal in Sukna is cleared by the Army against norms.
The army had initially refused an NOC for selling the land adjacent to the Sukna military station but the decision was reportedly reversed by the senior officers. Also the documents relating to the NOC were forged and the original documents rejecting the NOC were replaced with forged papers in the army records.
Lt Gen Prakash, who was called to Kolkata for questioning in the case, admitted he had known Agarwal for more than a decade. He was called for questioning after Lt Gen P K Rath, whose appointment as Deputy Chief of Army Staff has since been scrapped by the Ministry of Defence, told the CoI that an educational institution had been recommended by Lt Gen Prakash and that he was just following the orders by Lt. Gen Prakash.
The inquiry has also established that Lt Gen Prakash was in constant touch with Lt Gen Rath and Agarwal while the deal was being struck.
The following phone records were presented at the CoI:
- February 7: Lt Gen Prakash called Dilip Agarwal a day before the 33 Corps HQ gave an undertaking to the Commissioner General of Land Reforms, West Bengal on February 8 that the Army had "no objection if an educational institution and residential facility is set up in the proposed land measuring about 71 acres". This MoU was in direct contradiction to an earlier projection made by the Army in December 2008 that the land should be acquired by the military for security reasons.
- March 19: A day before the MoU was to be signed, Agarwal and Lt Gen Prakash spoke four times between 10.30 am and 12.40 pm. This was allegedly the time when the MoU was being drafted in Darjeeling.
- March 20: The day the MoU granting NoC's for transfer of land was signed between the Army and the educational institution, Agarwal spoke to Lt Gen Prakash on his official phone number at Army HQ at 10.49 am. At 3.49 pm, after the MoU had been signed, Agarwal spoke to Lt Gen Prakash again, this time on his mobile. Agarwal was one of the persons who signed the MoU with the Army.
It was also probed as per the statement by the real estate developer himself that Lt Gen Prakash was being offered the role to head the upcoming school as a Director if the deal went through.
I would like to reiterate few words from Senior Army Official that "if an Officer of such a cadre is corrupt, that means he has not become corrupt all of a sudden, it means he has been corrupt for a long time until it was found." As usual, Army has been asked to expedite the inquiry and fix responsibility at the earliest by Defence Ministry.
According to trusted sources, apart from personal visits by Lt Gen Awdhesh Prakash, Dilip Agrawal has been favouring Lt. Gen Awdhesh Prakash and his wife in terms of shopping, presents and few more lucrative offers during their visits to Siliguri and more and he did even offered him to take retirement and join him and make more money than what he is making in Army. (So there might be a cake involved in the deal too.)
Let's see what turn events are going to take up in next few days as the heat is still on and the nation demands explanation from these "Celebrity Officer Breed" cropping up here and there in the system and spoiling the reputation of the Organization.
Wait and watch these Three C's of System unfolding in the best of their ways.
"Corps, Corrosion and Corruption"converting to "Core Corrosion by Corruption"
Pretty young women must marry army officers to motivate young men to serve the nation.
With due apologies to Mr. Chitranjan Sawant for using his masterpiece blog post detailing the ways to overcome officer shortage in the Indian Army deserves widest possible coverage.
The pièce de résistance is here.
Young women who don’t join the army have another important role to play. They may opt to marry army officers and encourage their female friends to follow suit. If pretty young women in large numbers come forward to marry army officers, the stock of army officers in social circles goes up. This in turn provides indirect motivation to other young men to join the corps of officers and serve the nation.
One should remember that marriage is the bedrock of happy family life. A happy family is the basic unit that makes a nation happy. A happy nation thinks well, acts well and does problem solving effectively. Thereafter, winning a battle becomes a matter of battle procedure and the overawed enemy either turns tail or lays down arms in surrender.
Thus a correct mental make -up that leads to happiness of the family is a battle winning factor. An army that comes to be known as a winner attracts more young men who are good officer material. Thus, it is a chain reaction of the good attracting the good, leading to the better and the best in life.
If army officers get all the babes, then more young men will want to be army officers. But it is wrong to presume that getting women to marry army officers— out of a sense of patriotic duty— will lengthen the list of applicants to military academies.
That’s because of the OMIPP, the Oldest Mistake In Public Policy, which mistakes correlation for causation. In this case, attractive young women of marriageable age might be attracted to young men from a certain industry for the same reason as other young men want to get into that industry. Maybe because that industry pays well, offers a relatively better quality of life, a higher social status or all of the above.
Strategies to Ameliorate hard living
A whispering campaign among young nubile girls in colleges has had adverse effect on army officers finding good brides. The whisper pertained to the hard living conditions in non-peace stations and hard peace stations. The newly-wed couples don’t mind living in one-room tenements in hard peace stations as it is quite cozy.
In some stations these are called ‘honeymoon quarters or mercy quarters’. However, some who stay in transit camps find the fixed menu, the bill of fare rather a bore and an appetite killer. Once a bride complained of repeat bill of fare and got a polite reply “Madam, this is a Transit Officers Mess. Here the officers change, not the menu.”
Jokes apart. One needs a good will power to survive on that kind of food for a long time.
With the passage of time, children born and grow up. The problem of education arises. Fortunately, the army schools have ameliorated the educational hardship also quite a bit but not wholly. The higher education is also now being looked after by the army in medical and technical fields.
This should be made known to rank and file so that all concerned know that the army life is now liveable and the anti-publicity is a legacy of the lingering past. It will indeed put comma to civilian establishments stealing the talented youth from the army. Guarding its youth pool and putting a stop to brain drain will enrich the corps of officers day by day.
The army should keep the media, both print and electronic, on its right side so that the good word is spread to every nook and corner of the country.
The good word is : the Indian army looks after its personnel and the future of the new generation is bright. Join the corps of officers of the Indian Army and believe in the dictum.
So whether you are recruiting for the army or for the public sanitation department, you are better off making the job profile more attractive. The babes will follow.
“Join the army. Serve the nation. Get married to a Pretty Young Lady.” That sounds like the catchiest advertising slogan ever devised by any armed force in the world.
And what about the poor young officers in the army’s sister services — Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force — who must be feeling miserable about rather low officer shortages in their services.
I could not resist the temptation to not blog this. Here is their shout for the nation:Babes, do your Patriotic Duty !!
It is quite an eclectic list but there seems to be only one qualification to make the cut: lack of any background, expertise or interest in matters pertaining to defence, national security and strategic affairs.
Let it also be known that the Chairman of the committee, Mr. Satpal Maharaj is a spiritual figure, who heads a religious cult, the Manav Utthan Seva Samiti.
Headed by such a divine figure and composed exclusively of people devoid of any expertise in defence, the effectiveness of legislative oversight provided by this committee to the defence ministry and the defence services is a foregone conclusion. Who cares?
Celebrity, fortune, self obsession, sensational amorality and phenomenal lack of judgement…. I was just reading an article by Mr. M J Akbar and all those adjectives that have become synonymous to a celebrity and Shahrukh Khan in particular. Quite relevant in the recent scenario where a celebrity with a talent but not sure about virtue is making uproar regarding special treatment in US. Among all those virtues that a celebrity owns by default, walking on air is quite an art. A single wrong foot and you are bang down.
The way Mr. Shahrukh Khan put the whole Govt. in motion just because he was treated just like another man in the world by US customs and border security authorities. Everybody including Mr. Shahrukh Khan are aware of the fact that this is not his first visit to US, so there must have been some reason for the fact that he was detained for the first time. At the same time US Govt. have some reasonable questions about Mr. Shahrukh Khan’s hosts.
Every celebrity is famous but everybody famous is not a celebrity. Ask Former President Mr. Abdul Kalam who did not even let any fly know that something same has happened with him at DelhiAirport. He is still living in the real world in spite of being famous. How uncommon..!!!!
Little while ago Mr. Shahrukh Khan did delivered a sermon to Mr. Emraan Hashmi when he complained about being denied a flat in Mumbai just because of his religious identity. Mr. Shahrukh Khan could have kept quiet but there are no brownie points for silence. Also he could not think in real terms, that celebrating the status of celebrity is not always a real opportunity. He told in bold words to Mr. Emraan Hashmi to stop crying. But when his imperial procession was marginally interrupted he wailed loud enough to be heard all over the country.
Mr. Emraan Hashmi is just pleading for home and Mr.Shahrukh Khan is just 3 letters ahead, demanding 'homage' from all of the world.
The row made by Anil Ambani in his AGM a few days back regarding terms of Production Sharing Contract for KG Basin.
There is lot to it including the fact that Indian Government should legally resolve the violation of basic terms of Production Sharing Contract(PSC), which provides the legal framework for exploration, development and production of gas reserves. It should uphold the interests of taxpayers and safeguard them.
PSC usually does give the right to sell gas to any one. But it is not clear if this particular PSC has that clause or not. But PSC definitely will have the clause of selling gas at arm’s length and be market-based.
A price agreed by brothers cannot be considered to be arm’s length. Even if RIL agrees to sell gas at a lower price, the Government is not bound by such a clause since the Government owns all gas reserves, and PSC gives the right to take some portion of those revenues.
Infact, the Government has legal rights to refuse a lower gas price allegedly negotiated between the brothers based on the PSC. If the brothers were on good terms, no one would have found out about this deal.
PSC is an overriding contract, which controls the sharing of gas reserves between the investor that is RIL, and the Government. RIL is bound by the terms of the contract terms. Once RIL gets its share it can decide how to share it with RNRL. But the total lot of gas revenues and how it is shared between the Government and RIL have to be as per PSC.
So here its a lot that is at stake including billions of dollars depending upon how PSC is being implemented.
Unfortunaltely this contract is commercially very sensitive one and public doesn't have any access to it even by RTI.
So its upto Government and those higher officials to fix the best rate according to international markets and expected crude oil prices in the next 20 yrs because rates of gas fluctuates at the nerve of crude oil prices in long term. We have experts in the subject matter and they are expected to arrive at reasonable decision ignoring any sweetheart deals in the past. Here its economy that is on stake on a different note.
Anil Ambani is making a row just because he wants his own pie of "Production Sharing".. mind you its not Profit Sharing that is involved with this deal but Production Sharing is.
P.S.
The total control of the gas market today in India by the Government is a problem. Despite the recommendations of many high-powered committees, the Government has not liberalised the gas market.
Gas prices are fixed on an arbitrary basis by the bureaucrats in the petroleum ministry without allowing the market to decide. Even when India was paying international price to import LNG (liquefied natural gas) at as high as $12/ million British thermal unit (mmbtu) in 2008, the Government-owned gas production was sold at a throwaway price of less than $2.00/mmbtu.
Rest of it has all of us to think, wait and watch..
