MPs question Army chief's conduct

Cutting across party lines, for the first time, Members of Parliament were critical of the conduct of Chief of Army Staff, General

V K Singh, in making public the fact that he was offered a bribe for the procurement of certain equipment (allegedly sub-standard) for the Indian Army.

Singh made this charge in an interview to The Hindu and ETV. Defence minister

A K Antony, on Monday, ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into Singh’s claim. “The allegation of General Singh that he was offered bribe is serious. We have to handle it,” Antony said.

It was not just the Congress, but also the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Janata Dal United (JD-U) and other parties that reacted sharply to Singh’s statement, breaking with the past practice of never criticising defence personnel. “If someone had approached General Singh, he should have got an FIR registered against the person concerned,” Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari told reporters outside Parliament.

JD-U leader Shivanand Tiwari said, “The Army chief should be asked why he did not call the police if he was offered a bribe?” BJP leader Jaswant Singh said the General’s remarks were distressing and he should not have gone public with these, and instead he should have spoken to the defence minister regarding the matter.

However, the BJP criticised the UPA-II government for not taking any action on General Singh’s allegations. “What has the government done after General Singh revealed that he was offered a bribe? This is a serious matter. Let the defence minister inform what he has done on the issue,” senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu said outside Parliament.

The Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 2 pm as the Opposition created a ruckus on the issue. However, sotto voce conversations between BJP leader Sushma Swaraj and minister of state in the PMO, V Narayanaswamy in the Lok Sabha revealed that Swaraj and NDA colleague Sharad Yadav had advised the government to urge Singh to talk less.

Singh had claimed that he was offered a bribe of Rs 14 crore by an equipment lobbyist to have a tranche of 600 sub-standard vehicles cleared for purchase. Singh also said 7,000 of those sub-standard vehicles were already in use in the Army and had been sold over the years at exorbitant prices.

In an interview to national daily, The Hindu, General Singh said, “One of these men had the gumption to walk up to me and tell me that if I cleared the tranche, he would give me Rs 14 crore. He was offering a bribe to me. He told me that people before me had taken money and that those who would come after me would also take money.”

General Singh also said that he had reported the incident to the defence minister.

When asked how the Army chief could be offered a bribe, he said, “Obviously, somewhere our standards of probity and integrity have fallen.”