Shortfall of officers a main reason behind friction: Army Chief

Army Chief General Bikram Singh feels the deficiency of over 10,000 officers in the force is one of the main reasons behind friction between officers and jawans, which flared up on a few occasions recently.

Interacting with journalists, Gen Singh said the findings of the Courts of Inquiry (CoIs) are awaited in two recent incidents and suitable steps will be taken on its basis.

Asked whether the shortage of officers is leading to incidents of friction between soldiers and officers, Gen Singh said, "Yes, that is one of the main reasons. The shortfall of officers as of now is 10,100. The deficiency is definitely impacting."

This year in May and August two such incidents were reported in units located at Nyoma and Samba in Jammu and Kashmir where scuffle broke out between the jawans and the officers. One such incident had reportedly taken place in 2010 in Gurdaspur in Punjab.

Terming the incidents as "aberrations" and "isolated" ones, the Army Chief said his concerns were to ensure that the environment at the unit-level is suitable for growth and upholding the military values.

"As you know we had one or two instances, these are aberrations of course and these were isolated incidents. One was in 2010 and in recent past we had two incidents," he said.

On steps taken by him to address the issue, he said, "As a Chief, my concerns have been to ensure that we get back to basics and ensure that climate and environment in the units are correct and conducive to growth and group cohesion and the core values of the Army are upheld."

Gen Singh said integrity, duty, loyalty, respect, selfless service, courage and honour are some of the values taught by Army and he has been speaking about upholding them during his visits to various Commands and other military locations.

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