General Bipin Rawat on Wednesday took charge as the country’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Before taking charge, the former Army chief received a tri-services Guard of Honour.
Besides Rawat, all three services chiefs including General Manoj Mukund Naravane, Admiral Karambir Singh and Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria were present at the Guard of Honour.
In his address after taking charge, General Rawat said that all the three forces will work as team.
“The CDS has a task cut out: To make all three services work in a cohesive manner. We will work as team,” he said.
“As team, we will work towards a goal where 1+1+1 is either five or seven, and not three. What I mean is, the synergised effort should not be the sum of the whole, it should be much more. And we have to achieve that through integration,” he added.
He further said that as per the task given, the Chief of Defence Staff will have to enhance integration and do better resource management.
On being asked about the allegations that he is “politically inclined”, CDS General Rawat said that, “We stay far away from politics, very far”.
He, however, added that the forces are bound to work according to the directions of the Government in power.
As the Army chief, Rawat had courted controversy with his “political” criticism of the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
At an event in Delhi on Thursday, Rawat had said that “leaders are not those who lead the people in inappropriate direction”.
“Leadership is all about leading. When you move forward, everybody follows… But leaders are those who lead people in the right direction. Leaders are not those people who lead people in inappropriate directions, as we are witnessing in a large number of university and college students, the way they are leading masses of crowds to carry out arson and violence in our cities and towns. This is not leadership,” he said.
Opposition leaders had accused him of overstepping his brief.
Reacting to his criticism, a spokesperson of the Congress, Brijesh Kalappa tweeted that an Army chief speaking against CAA protests was “against democracy”.
General Rawat’s comments on the anti-CAA protests also came in for sharp criticism from Congress Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh.
AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi in a tweet lashed out saying that “Leadership is knowing the limits of one’s office, understanding the idea civilian supremacy and preserving the integrity of the institution that one heads”.
On December 30 last year, General Bipin Rawat was appointed as the first Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), a post created to make it the main point of contact for the government for dealing with defence forces’ issues.
General Rawat had taken over as Army chief on December 31, 2016, after superseding two officers senior to him.