Coup Against The Forces

THE summary dismissal of chief of naval staff (CNS) Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, December 30 last year, set off the most intense and prolonged soul-searching since the Ayodhya demolition in the same month six years earlier. But in all the charges and countercharges no one questioned one assumption-that the government's move reflected severe displeasure with Bhagwat. Four weeks of piecing together the sequence of events that led to the dismissal has led me to a far more disturbing conclusion. This is that it wasn't the product of a personality clash between him and George Fernandes, but one half of a deliberate plan to destroy the autonomy of the armed forces in operational and service-related matters by bending the existing chiefs of staff to the ministry of defence's (mod) will, or replacing them with compliant men. The catalyst that changed a vague plan into an explicit conspiracy-a virtual coup against the armed forces-was the bjp government's decision in July '98 to raise the retirement age for officers in the forces by two years.

The first moves were aimed at Air Marshal S.K. Sareen, then head of the Indian Air Force (iaf). The mod achieved its goal on December 31, 1998, when Sareen, whose term wasn't extended despite the increase in retirement age, went into retirement. Not coincidentally, that happened just a day after Bhagwat had been sacked. The Sareen operation began with an inadvertent mistake during the recording of the minutes of a Group of Ministers' meeting on the pay commission's awards on July 16, 1997. Instead of the 'flying allowance is to be increased by Rs 7,000 per month , the official recorded that the 'fighter allowance was to be hiked by this amount. This implied transport and helicopter pilots would continue to get a flying allowance of Rs 2,400 while fighter pilots would get Rs 7,000. When Sareen saw the Cabinet's 'decision on July 24, he was appalled. At his urging, defence minister Mulayam Singh Yadav wrote to the PM five days later to rectify the error. Copies were sent to the cabinet secretary and the defence secretary. Sareen also met the principal secretary to the PM, the cabinet secretary and the secretary (expenditure) in the finance ministry. In ensuing months he wrote many reminders. Inexplicably, the correction was never made.

In October '97, the government formalised the pay commission's award and turned this differential into law. Sareen bore the brunt of the fury of pilots and the press. He insisted at his weekly meetings with the defence minister that it be put on record that he was not the author of the differential. The minister ordered a press release on this but it was never done. At this juncture, allegations surfaced that Sareen received kickbacks in the Rs 7,000 crore Sukhoi (Su-30) deal, signed five months before he became air chief.

When George Fernandes took over in March '98, Sareen brought the matter to his attention. By now iaf pilots had lived with the discriminatory pay for five months and were openly airing their discontent in the media. Fernandes promptly instructed the defence secretary to correct the error, but when this was finally done the press took credit.

Sareen's woes didn't end with the change of government. Between March and September, a small group of journalists continued a relentless campaign, accusing him of having taken bribes on the acquisition of nearly every item of the avionics package for the Su-30 in which the iaf had changed the supplier. The vague charges relied heavily on inputs from rival suppliers. But the mod didn't defend Sareen. On the contrary, as Sareen, Bhagwat and army chief General V.P. Malik repeatedly complained to the defence minister orally or (in Sareen's and Bhagwat's case) in writing, these and other scurrilous charges emanated from Swagath Ghosh, director of public relations, mod, who was working in tandem with defence secretary Ajit Kumar.

Coup against Sareen: In early September, the three chiefs took the unusual step of asking jointly for an appointment with the minister. When this was refused, they wrote him a joint letter (September 8), stating they could no longer work with Ajit Kumar. Fernandes ignored the letter. Kumar would probably have rested content had the government not raised the retirement age in the armed forces. This meant Sareen would continue as chief till December 2000, and Bhagwat till September 2001. To prevent this, Kumar planted fresh allegations of corruption in the Sukhoi deal and foisted on Bhagwat Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh, whom Bhagwat disliked.

Around September 20, media reports accused Sareen of having brought in an 'intruder company, France's SAGEM, to supply satellite-based inertial navigation systems for the Su-30, displacing another French firm, SEXTANT, which had already supplied 175 units for upgrading the MiG-21s. It praised Kumar for calling a meeting two days after the report appeared and awarding the contract to SEXTANT.

The truth was very different. SEXTANT had been preferred to SAGEM for the MiG upgrade despite it being completely untried and lacking certification from any air force. SAGEM, though, had received its Mil-certification in 1991 and was also cheaper. Defence advisor Abdul Kalam had preferred SAGEM. Kumar pulled off the deal after calling a meeting heavily loaded with MoD officials and engineers from Hindustan Aeronautics, all his underlings. He excluded the iaf's technical evaluation team which had rejected SEXTANT.

By overplaying his hand, Kumar exposed it. Full details of this meeting on a highly secret subject appeared in a section of the press-a leak that could only have come from Kumar himself. It was now clear where the media had got the original story that supposedly spurred Kumar into calling his meeting. If Kumar emerges as a scheming manipulator, his minions were as clumsy when it came to hiding the purpose of the slander. An article published at the same time in Outlook, which too was bombarded with anti-Sareen stories by the MoD and the pmo, said, 'Sareen's fate is now in the hands of political bosses who will decide whether he should get an extension when his term comes to an end in December. Sareen never got his extension.

The undermining of Bhagwat: This story dates back to November 9, '97. Naval HQ (nhq) had sent a file recommending officers for the posts of vice-chief and commanders-in-chief of the three commands at Vishakhapatnam, Kochi and Mumbai-in keeping with the policy that key positions shouldn't be kept vacant and new appointments cleared before the incumbents retired. The defence secretary took two months to send the file for approval to the minister. In contrast, Mulayam took only 48 hours to clear the names.

The file went to the pmo but was withdrawn on January 25 by the cabinet secretary. It came back to Bhagwat with a request that the appointments of two flag officers be changed. Bhagwat didn't concur and returned the file with his explanation. Mulayam again agreed with Bhagwat and sent the file to the cabinet secretary for presentation to the appointments committee of cabinet (acc). Nothing further happened till Bhagwat met I.K. Gujral in end-February and the prime minister approved the appointments. By going to the PM, Bhagwat had tweaked Kumar's nose. Kumar got even by sitting on all key issues raised by nhq. Thus, when nhq reported how a senior mod official on an arms purchase mission in Russia had been caught in a classic honeypot operation, Kumar 'lost the file.

Two other conflicts between nhq and the bureaucracy in the first half of '98 paved the way for the coup against Bhagwat. By the end of '96, army chief Gen. Roychoudhury had asked Bhagwat for help in intercepting arms shipments from the Far East being shunted into the northeast via Chittagong and Cox's Bazaar. Bhagwat asked for precise intelligence shipments and routes. In the first week of February '98, raw told the forces that a shipment was on the way but that it would be coming through the Malacca Straits, south of the Andamans. The Directorate of Military Intelligence, however, surmised that the route lay further north. The navy acted upon the latter's information and intercepted three trawlers, carrying arms for two insurgent groups in Assam and one in Myanmar. This caused immense anger in raw, which had been funnelling weapons to insurgents in Myanmar.

The confrontation that completed the rift between Bhagwat and Fernandes came after the navy intercepted two more Thai trawlers near Narcodam Island in the Andamans on May 29-30, 1998. When the trawlers attempted to flee to Burmese waters, the Navy sank one. From the other it recovered arms and 50 kg of heroin. Far from commending the navy, Fernandes didn't hide his displeasure. On July 27, the defence secretary issued an order barring the service chiefs from 'acting on intelligence reports...relating to gun-running and other illegal activities in the Andaman seas without approval. Never before had the forces been given so explicit an order not to defend the country.

The order provoked a spat between Fernandes and the service chiefs on August 8 that sealed Bhagwat's fate. At an ncc function attended by all three, Bhagwat said the order was virtually unenforceable. There were two other operations, one off Sri Lanka, the other off the west coast, aimed at intercepting arms supply to insurgents. Bhagwat did not see why only one of the three operations should be subject to clearance by the ministry. He also said the fear that the navy might cause a diplomatic row by entering Myanmar's waters during a chase was bogus because the operation was being carried out in cooperation with Myanmar authorities.
In the next two months, possibly forewarned, three more arms shipments slipped through.

The final coup: Clearly, Bhagwat would be much harder to get rid of than Sareen. In the latter's case, they only had to stir up sufficient doubt about his integrity. Bhagwat had 10 months more to go, and was so squeaky clean that any attempt to make him look corrupt would not stick. He had to be forced to resign or be dismissed.

The tool: Harinder Singh. Bhagwat had denied Singh a promotion on three grounds-average performance as Fortress Andaman commander; lack of adequate sense of duty; enjoying lavish hospitality in London, Moscow and St Petersburg from ex-naval officers employed by arms dealers. Singh had also filed a case against his supercession in the Calcutta high court, in which he accused Bhagwat of being anti-Sikh and wife Niloufer of being a half-Muslim communist.

Singh had violated a sacred, if unwritten, taboo-making communal aspersions against a brother officer. He merited severe censure; instead Kumar, with Fernandes' blessings, took the extraordinary-probably illegal-step of expunging Bhagwat's adverse comments from Singh's confidential report. The two submitted Singh's name, and his now sanitised record, for promotion. At no point was the acc told that Singh had not been recommended by the cns; it was deceived into unwittingly violating the Navy Act.

Singh was just a tool in the hands of the Fernandes-Kumar duo. This becomes clear when we look at the date when Bhagwat's adverse remarks were expunged-August 12, four days after Fernandes' spat with Bhagwat at the ncc meet and three weeks after the retirement age was raised.

Getting rid of Bhagwat was only half the gameplan; the other half was ensuring his replacement knew his place. Kumar had been grooming Admiral Sushil Kumar for that role since December '97. Between August and December '98, he made 14 calls from his office to Sushil Kumar in Kochi. Fernandes too must have been in touch with the admiral. In a Doordarshan interview, he said Admiral Kumar had phoned him in panic from Kochi saying he had been threatened with a court-martial. Fernandes had assured him of his support.

Is this the kind of conversation defence ministers normally have with officers behind their chiefs' backs? Its significance becomes apparent when seen against other events. On October 30, Admiral Kumar orally retracted his statutory complaint of October 7 to Bhagwat, in the presence of vice-chief Manvendra Singh. He also agreed to leave his posting in Bhagwat's hands. Just 25 days later, on November 24, he made a statutory representation to the minister bypassing service rules. Clearly, someone had made him adopt this irregular course of action. That person had no option but to shield him. He did, and five weeks later installed him as the cns! The coup was complete.