No more feuding

Openly investigate allegations against V K Singh

The former chief of army staff, General V K Singh, may have retired from the army but has not given up on making headlines. Since leaving office, he has not been shy about raising his personal concerns in whatever forum will accept him. In the last week, he addressed a rally with the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi; and was the subject of various reports in The Indian Express that wrote about an internal inquiry by the army into some of his actions while he was the chief. Mr Singh then held a combative press conference in which he questioned the timing of the report's leak - as well as attacking the Supreme Court, which had last year been noticeably unfriendly towards his petition concerning his date of birth, which had an impact on his retirement date. It is true that the timing of these most recent allegations against Mr Singh's conduct as chief has given rise to wide suspicion, coming as they do simultaneously with his decision to hitch his wagon to Mr Modi's juggernaut. Worse, the problematic timing might distract from the very real concerns about Mr Singh's actions. If some in the government were seeking merely to embarrass Mr Singh by leaking a six-month-old inquiry report now, then they will not properly achieve their ends, and succeed only in embarrassing themselves.

Nevertheless, the allegations against Mr Singh are grave. The army is certainly expected to conduct operations for military intelligence - but that mandate is for battlefield intelligence. The focus of the now-disbanded Technical Support Division that is at the centre of the current allegations was, however, New Delhi - not usually considered a battlefield by most army chiefs. Indeed, accusations of destabilising an elected government in a sensitive state or of using funds to perpetuate a battle against Mr Singh's successor as army chief, General Bikram Singh, are also of concern. The government's explanations for why this deeply worrying information has not been acted on by a formal inquiry are as unsatisfying to many as the timing of the leak.

Mr Singh's behaviour and the unseemly feud between two army chiefs - and worse, the sectarian and ethnic flavour that the confrontation has taken on - could not come at a worse time for the armed forces in general, which are already under considerable fire. No longer are the uniformed services considered exempt from corruption, which was once seen as an essentially civilian endeavour. A sequence of events has shattered that consensus. In the tenure of Mr Singh's predecessor, Deepak Kapoor, four generals were indicted for dodgy land transactions in West Bengal. One of them was Mr Kapoor's close aide, and military secretary. Mr Kapoor himself was indicted, along with another former chief, N C Vij, by an army court of inquiry into the controversial Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai. Another lieutenant-general was cashiered and sentenced to three years' rigorous imprisonment for procuring substandard rations for troops. And, of course, Air Chief Marshal S P Tyagi and his family were recently questioned in relation to helicopter purchase by the air force. This is not the time for personal scores to be settled. The only way out is to ensure more and better transparency. The allegations against V K Singh are serious. Even if the evidence led nowhere, a more open process should now be followed to ensure that any wrongdoing comes to light.