Did Gen Singh sully army's image by tweeting against Lt Gen Suhag?

The Centre was in for a rude shock today when one of its ministers and former army chief Gen (Retd) VK Singh tweeted against his former junior and current Army Chief-designate Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag accusing his team at 3 Corps of “dacoity”. The torrent of tweets followed an affidavit that was submitted on 4 June at the Supreme Court by the Ministry of Defence, which used harsh language against the former chief. “This is unbecoming of a former general who is also a current Union minister to attack the persona of an Army Chief-designate. His tweets were very disturbing and worrying. Those tweets sounded very diabolical against Lt Gen Dalbir Suhag. It may cause acute discomfiture for the person who will head the army when he is well aware that a person who was his former boss and a part of the government now is completely against him. Our friends across the border would be very happy for this state of affairs involving our army,” Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha told CNN-IBN during a panel discussion. [caption id=“attachment_1566479” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Gen (Retd.) VK Singh. PTI[/caption] Owing to the tweets by Gen VK Singh today morning, Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley was forced to make a short statement in Parliament reaffirming the government’s position of standing by the appointment of Lt Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag as the next army chief. Although he urged the political parties to keep the army away from politics, this did not stop the Congress from demanding the resignation of Singh from the Council of Ministers. The BJP as a party showed solidarity with the government but preferred to stay mum on Singh. “The stand of the party is very clear. A very tall leader of our party and the Union Defence Minister Arun Jaitley has already made it very clear about our position on the floor of the House. This is a time to stand by the morale of the army. Let us keep the tweets aside. The appointment of the army chief should be outside the political realm,” said BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra. The controversy of the affidavit has also led Jaitley to seek an explanation from defence secretary RK Mathur and other senior officials in the ministry as to how such an important affidavit was submitted before the Supreme Court without proper scrutiny. “The defence ministry has already ordered an enquiry. Let us wait for the report. May be after the enquiry is over the Centre may pull out some portion of the affidavit,” Patra said. The callousness with which such an important matter was dealt with surprised many. “There has been no application of mind during the filing of the affidavit in the Supreme Court. People who prepared the affidavit in the defence ministry should be taken to task. Moreover, there is a tradition that whoever files an affidavit with the Armed Forces Tribunal or a court is seen as an enemy by the Military Secretariat. This has to end,” said military and legal expert Maj (Retd) Navdeep Singh. “The political executive has to be very strong. They should not believe what the lower bureaucracy is saying in terms of administration and what the Military Secretariat is saying on promotional matters. This would help for a healthy civil-military relationship,” Singh said.