Army, Ministry of Defence reviewing former chief Naravane's memoir: Report

The Indian Army and Ministry of Defence are reviewing the memoir of former chief General MM Naravane "Four Stars of Destiny", which contains details about his conversation with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on the movement of Chinese troops in Ladakh in 2020 and the Agnipath scheme, the Indian Express (IE) reported on Friday.

The book's publisher, Penguin Random House, has been asked not to share the excerpts or soft copies of the book until the review is over, it added. The book was scheduled to start selling this month.

Last year, news agency PTI had reported on some excerpts from the book. It showed a wide range of disclosures made by Naravane related to the Galwan Valley clashes and the recruitment of people in the Agnipath scheme.

According to the excerpts, Singh told Naravane "Jo ucchit samjho woh karo (Do whatever you deem appropriate)" on the night of August 31, 2020, following a tense situation arising out of Chinese PLA moving tanks and troops in Rechin La mountain pass on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.

Naravane said that there was a flurry of phone calls between the defence minister, external affairs minister, the national security advisor and the chief of defence staff that night on the sensitive situation.

After Singh's call, Naravane says a hundred different thoughts "flashed through" his mind. "I conveyed the criticality of the situation to the RM (Raksha Mantri), who said he would get back to me, which he did, by about 2230 hours," Naravane wrote.

"I had been handed a hot potato. With this carte blanche, the onus was now totally on me. I took a deep breath and sat silently for a few minutes. All was quiet save for the ticking of the wall clock," he said.

On the Agnipath Scheme, which led to country-wide protests, Naravane has written that the Army's initial view was that 75 per cent of the personnel to be recruited could be retained while 25 per cent should be released.

In June 2022, the government rolled out the Agnipath recruitment scheme for short-term induction of personnel with an aim to bring down the age profile of the three services. It provided for recruiting people between the age bracket of 17-and-half years and 21 for four years with a provision to retain 25 per cent of them for 15 more years.

Naravane also said that the starting salaries of inductees were kept at Rs 20,000 per month, which was "not acceptable".

"This was just not acceptable. Here, we were talking about a trained soldier, who was expected to lay down his life for the country. Surely a soldier could not be compared with a daily wage labourer? Based on our very strong recommendations, this was later raised to Rs 30,000 per month," he said.

The IE report on Friday cited a source as saying that after the 2021 amendment of the Central Civil Services (Pension) Rules, 1972, retired government servants, especially from intelligence and security-related organisations, are not allowed to publish any information without prior permission. However, the Defence services are not explicitly covered under the rules.