The Navy’s Eastern Commander, Vice Admiral Sureesh Mehta, has been appointed the next Chief of Naval Staff, and will take charge on October 31 when current chief Admiral Arun Prakash retires, over two years after he took office in July 2004. Farewell ceremonials have already begun and will occupy Admiral Prakash for much of the next two months.

Admiral Mehta inherits a service steeped in an exercise of operational transformation, renewed strategic diplomacy and modernisation on all fronts. The last two years have been busy for the Navy with its preoccupations including tsunami relief operations, force projection, high-level exercises for the first time with the US and other large naval forces and a virtually overhauled regional presence focused on energy security in the maritime sphere and anti-terror on the high seas.

A qualified Naval aviator of the “old mould”, Mehta flew the conventional Sea Hawk aircraft off the country’s first aircraft carrier INS Vikrant for many years. Born three days after the country gained independence, Mehta was commissioned into the Navy in 1967, after which he passed out of the National Defence College in Delhi and the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington before commanding frigates— INS Beas and INS Godavari.

Promoted to Rear Admiral (equivalent to Major General in the Army) in 1995, Mehta served as Flag Officer Goa Area (FOGA), and went on to command the Western Fleet during Operation Parakram.