With the promotion of 202 senior army officers hanging on the line, there is a sense of anxiety amongst them if the ‘flawed promotion system’ in place since 2009 would be corrected this time.

The outcome of the promotion boards of 63 major generals from the 1975 batch and another 139 brigadiers from the 1978 batch held in January is yet to be announced.

The delay has been attributed to a proposal from the army headquarters for changes in the promotion policy for the senior army officers to the defence ministry for a final decision.

“We are looking forward to the change in the existing system wherein in case of a single officer batch, there is no competition and the lone officer is automatically considered for 100% promotion irrespective of the marks scored,” said one of the serving major generals on request of anonymity.

In all India central civil services like IAS, IPS, civil services of states including police, Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, single officer batches are combined with next batches to widen the zone of consideration for promotions so as to select most competent officers for senior positions in accordance with existing govt. policy. But this practice is not carried out in the army.

“Even a mediocre officer will get through at cost of more competent officers of next batches who may retire without even being considered for promotion. Such system throws up average officers in hierarchy of very sensitive logistic services of our Army which are more prone to corruption since they deal with maximum budget of Army on procurements,” he added.

Subsequent to Gen VK Singh taking over as army chief, the army carried out a high level in house study under the than Director General of Artillery Gen Rao to look into entire promotion system in army including feasibility of combining single officer up to  two batches.

The study group recommended the proposal and made presentation to the army commanders in August 2010.The same presentation was also made to defence minister AK Antony in Oct 2010 who gave his in principle approval and asked Army to send the same to MoD for formalising it.

The proposal has been in limbo eversince.