Its 'Reigning' Eastern command officers among top brass of Indian Army

In what comes across as a pattern, officers from the Eastern Command of the Indian Army have come to form the top brass at headquarters in Delhi in recent past underlining the government's renewed focus on defence of India's eastern borders that , among other countries, is shared with China.

On Saturday, Lieutenant General MMS Rai took over as the Vice Chief of Indian Army. He replaced Lieutenant General Philip Campose who retired on Friday after more than 40 years into service.

While Rai, prior to this posting served as the Eastern Army Commander, Lieutenant General Praveen Bakshi who served as Chief of Staff of Northern Command at Udhampur, took over the position vacated by him.

Notably, even as the the last three Chief of Army, namely, General Dalbir Singh Suhag (currently serving), General VK Singh (retired) and General Bikram Singh (retired) all headed the eastern Command at Kokata prior to getting the top post , Bakshi, is likely to be the next chief according to seniority of service and age.

Considering the strategic and defence challenges India faces on its eastern borders with China, besides with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and Nepal, it is only wise that top commanders have a solid exposures of eastern front, said a senior officer at the Delhi headquarters. India is raising a special Mountain Strike Corp on Eastern front comprising 88000-strong troop at a cost of Rs 64,678 crore. And top sources in the Army told dna that despite recent talks of downsizing the this Corp arising out of statements of fund crunch by defence minister Manohar Parrikar, there has been no shift of focus and almost 40 percent of it have already been raised.

"Problems on our eastern front, that forms the part of what we call in Army parlance the northern borders (borders with Pakistan denoted as Western borders), persist at a very high level. The day China turns around and move its focus out of its maritime problems in South China sea and gets into a conflict with India with which it undeniably has a big territorial dispute, we would have to to be prepared to tackle eventualities. There have been regular transgressions from across the border. Besides, we have huge insurgency problems in north eastern states and we have to deal with the conflicts in regions near borders with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan. Undoubtedly, we lay huge emphasis on these borders," said another top army commander at headquarters.

Headquarterd at Fort William in Kolkata, the eastern command of the Army encompasses the entire eastern theatre ranging from Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh towards the North, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram , Tripura and Meghalaya in the North-East and Assam and West Bengal.