Indian Army to undergo major reforms: Govt.

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ Major reforms will be carried out in the Indian Army to enhance its combat capability which will include redeployment of nearly 57,000 officers and other ranks as well as ensuring better utilisation of resources, the government announced today.

Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said perhaps for the first time after Independence, such a big and “far-reaching” reform process is being initiated in the Army. Replying to a question on whether the exercise was undertaken keeping in view the Dokalam episode, Jaitley said, “This is not specific to any incident. It had been going on much prior to Dokalam.”

The reform initiatives were prescribed by a committee headed by Lt Gen DB Shekatkar (retd) which had a mandate to recommend measures for enhancing of combat capability and rebalancing defence expenditure of the armed forces to increase “teeth to tail ratio”.

The ‘tooth-to-tail’ ratio refers to the amount of supply and support personnel (termed as tail) for each combat soldier (tooth). The panel had suggested 99 recommendations for structural changes in the Army and out of which the defence ministry has accepted 65 after consultations with all the stakeholders, Jaitley said.