Defence ministry rejects army chief's plea on age issue

New Delhi: The defence ministry has rejected General VK Singh’s statutory complaint to consider 10 May 1951 as his date of birth and conveyed to him that he will have to retire on 31 May next year. Singh had filed the statutory complaint with Defence Minister AK Antony, the first chief of the 1.2 million-strong army to do so, after the government on 21 July issued an order saying that it will consider 10 May 1950 as his date of birth, which would have denied him another 10 months in office.[caption id=“attachment_169090” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“End of age row? Image courtesy PIB”] [/caption] The ministry’s decision on the issue of his date of birth was today conveyed to the army chief, sources said in New Delhi. After the ministry decision on the statutory complaint, the army chief has exhausted the in-house remedies available to him and can approach a court of law which can either be the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) or the high court. The sources said the ministry has taken the decision of considering 10 May 1950 as his date of birth on the basis of the third opinion given by the Attorney General (AG). The AG had recently given his opinion on the statutory complaint filed by the army chief where he stuck to his earlier two opinions against giving any relief to the General. After these developments in defence ministry headquarters in South Block, the army chief went to meet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. After the meeting, he denied having any information about defence ministry’s decision on his age issue. On 16 December also, the army chief had held a meeting with Mukherjee after discussing his age issue at length with the defence minister. Mukherjee was the defence minister when the controversy over army chief’s age erupted in 2005 at the time of his appointment as Corps Commander of a Strike Corps. The ministry decision has come more than three weeks after the army chief handed over a reminder to the defence minister asking him to expedite decision on the age issue. PTI