Week Before Retirement, Indian Army Chief Endorses Controversial Book

This evening at a government-owned luxury hotel in the heart of Delhi, Indian Chief of Army Staff General V.K. Singh was chief guest at an event to release a book Assault on Merit: Civil Military Relations by former criminal lawyer R.K. Anand, a man of reportedly questionable credentials, whose legal career is perceived to have thinned down after he ran foul of the Supreme Court following a TV sting that exposed him influencing witnesses. There has been debate over whether it was appropriate for a serving Army chief to endorse a book of this kind, as his presence at the release no doubt does. His endorsement of the book comes on the back of the high-profile age row that peaked with the Army chief suing the government (and losing) earlier this year.

There is a sense that even if the Chief chose to endorse the book only to send out a message to the government before he retires on May 31 -- and this is, without a doubt, the principal reason for his association with the book and his interview to one of the co-authors -- it is peculiar that he would choose to tango with someone of R.K. Anand's reported credentials, which seem to go completely against precisely the sort of thing that the Army chief speaks out about.

There's a great debate on Headlines Today tonight. I'll post the video later.

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