Vice Admiral Karambir Singh will take over as the next Chief of Navy Staff replacing Admiral Sunil Lanba who retires on May 31. Admiral Karambir Singh will be the first helicopter pilot to become Chief of Indian Navy. The government has appointed Karambir Singh as the new Indian Navy Chief although there were three officers who were under consideration for the Indian Navy chief’s post.
Vice Admiral Karambir Singh was second in the seniority list. He has superseded Vice-Admiral Bimal Verma, who is currently serving as the Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command.
Who is Vice Admiral Bimal Verma?
Vice Admiral Bimal Verma is the current Commander in Chief Andaman & Nicobar (CINCAN), commissioned in 1979. Verma is the younger brother of Admiral Nirmal Verma, who was CNS from 2009-12. Sources said that Bimal Verma, brother of former Navy Chief Nirmal Verma, was bypassed because of the shadow of naval war room leak case on his career. He was posted in the directorate of naval operations when the alleged leak of sensitive information took place in 2005.
However, Verma’s supersession was anticipated for a long time. He has remained in the smaller and less consequential Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) since February 2015 while his juniors were given command of the navy’s two main commands. In October 2017, Singh was appointed chief of the Visakhapatnam-based eastern command and, in January, Vice Admiral Ajit Kumar P was placed at the head of the Mumbai-based western naval command.
This is the second time under NDA rule when supersession of senior officers in the armed forces happened. General Bipin Rawat’s appointment as Army chief was the first time when superssion of senior officers was done by the NDA government . The government had ignored two senior officers , Lt Gen Praveen Bakshi and P M Hariz while appointing Bipin Rawat as Army chief in December 2016.
