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Speech by Lt Gen (Retd) S K Sinha

Speech by Lt Gen (Retd) S K Sinha

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Introduction: I feel privileged to be invited to address this conference on two important issues, with which I have a very long association. These are emoluments of Army officers and the violence in Assam.

Emoluments of Army Officers

In his address to West Point, President Eisenhower said, "When diplomats fail to maintain peace the soldier is called out to restore peace. When the civil administration fails to maintain order the soldier is called out to restore order. As the Nation's final safeguard, the Army cannot afford a failure in either circumstance. Failure of the Army can lead to national catastrophe, endangering the survival of the Nation." I would urge our decision-makers to ponder over this statement of Eisenhower.

As one who served in the Indian Army both before and after Independence, I would like to apprise you how the emoluments and status of Army officers have been persistently lowered since Independence.

Before Independence, the Army got emoluments at par with the ICS and at some points higher than the latter.

After Independence the Government brought down the salary of Army officers to the level of IPS officers, with a slight edge for the former. This resulted in our salaries getting considerably slashed.

At the time of Independence, I was drawing a salary of Rs 1300 a month which overnight got reduced to Rs 770. Never before or after, have salaries of serving personnel been reduced so arbitrarily. The old salaries of our contemporaries in the ICS and IP were duly protected. No one from the Army went to court or launched any agitation. We accepted this blatant injustice with a stiff upper lip and enthusiastically went to war in Kashmir in which many of my colleagues got martyred. That was in 1947. We must accept that India of today is very different.

The pay equation between Army and Police officers was maintained till the Fourth Pay Commission, when this started being altered to the disadvantage of Army officers. I compliment the three Service Chiefs for doing their bounden duty in taking up the case of the emoluments of Lt Cols and Lt Gens at the highest level. I am surprised that some journalists, ignorant of facts have been critical of the Army and the Chiefs on this score.

I do not wish to bother you with details. I understand that to scuttle the case of Lt Cols, a red herring of comparing them with Deputy Commandants of Para Military Forces, has been raised. The latter till recently were Class 2 officers and even today are not at par with IPS officers. Moreover, the role and responsibility of the Army is different from that of the Para Military. As for Lt Gens, they got higher emoluments and held higher status than the Chief of Police of a State. That equation is also now sought to be altered to the disadvantage of the Army.

In 1973 Manekshaw was appointed Field Marshal. As Adjutant General I took up the case of the salary of Field Marshal with the Government. It took the Babus 33 years to take a decision and finally Manekshaw got his arrears of Rs 1.2 crores in 2007. The Defence Secretary handed over a cheque for that amount to him. Soon after, I met Manekshaw in the hospital, when he was on a ventilator. I congratulated him. He smiled and in his imitable way said that a Babu had given him a cheque but he was not sure if that cheque would be honoured.

Not only in terms of emoluments but also protocol, the position of Army officers has been persistently lowered after Independence. This applies to the Army Chief downwards and often this has been done after the Army has fought a war successfully. The protocol status of a Field Marshal has not yet been fixed in the Table of Precedence because Babudom wants to preserve the higher status of the ' Bara Babu ', the ' Cabinet Secretary '. When our first Field Marshal passed away recently, only a Minister of State attended the funeral. When the first British Field Marshal, the Duke of Wellington, passed away, Heads of States , Ambassadors, Prime Minister and Ministers attended his funeral. Such a cavalier approach of our rulers to the Army, aptly described by Eisenhower as the Nattion's ultimate weapon, is not in our national interest.

Assam

The shocking serial bomb blasts in Assam, the other day, in which over 81 innocent people got killed is a sad reflection on the functioning of the Government which has reduced India to a very soft State. Terrorists have been attacking city after city and our rulers issue only inane statements. In the case of Assam, the Nation is being made to suffer self-inflicted wounds.

Way back in the Sixties, forty years ago the then Governor of Assam, B K Nehru, and his Chief Minister B P Chaliha wanted to take measures against the influx of illegal migrants and took up the matter with the Centre. They were told to stop the nonsense.

B K Nehru was from the dynasty, a cousin of Indira Gandhi. In his autobiography, ' Nice Guys Finish Second ', he wrote that Chaliha belonged to an earlier generation of Congressmen that had a different set of values. They considered national interest above party interests which was now not so with the present generation of Congressmen. This was a clear indictment of vote bank politics.

Thirty years later, as Governor of Assam, I also took up this issue. I submitted a 42 page report to the President of India. I made 15 specific recommendations to check the danger posed by the unabated influx of illegal migrants from Assam not only to the demography of Assam but also to the Nation's security. These recommendations included the repeal of IMDT Act, border fencing, introducing photo identity cards at least in the border districts and updating national register of citizens. My recommendations were ignored. Congress legislators in Assam appealed to the President calling for my recall. Ultimately, the IMDT Act was struck down by the Supreme Court quoting extensively from my report but the Government brought it back through the backdoor, by amending the Foreigner's Act. The fencing of the 260 kilometer land border in Assam supposed to have started in 1985, is not yet fully complete.

While I was Governor of J & K, the Army completed a much more sophisticated fencing of 750 kilometers of the border, in far more difficult terrain. As for photo identity cards and national registere of citizens, no action whatsoever has been taken.

There has been total lack of political will to take any action to stop the demographic aggression in Assam due to vote bank considerations.

On 10 April 1992, Hiteshwar Saikia the then Chief Minister of Assam stated in the State Assembly that there were 3 million illegal immigrants in Assam. Two days later he was pressurized to say to the Press that there were no illegal immigrants in Assam.

On 6 May 1997 the then Union Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta, told the Parliament that there were 1 crore illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India.

On 15 July 2004 K P Jaiswal the Minister of State for Home told the Parliament that there were 1.2 crore illegal immigrants in the country. The following day Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Guwahati. Obviously under the influence of local Congressmen, he stated that the figures mentioned by his junior Minister in the Parliament were not authentic. A week later Jaiswal told the Parliament that he had quoted figures on the basis of hearsay.

The root cause of militancy and Jehadi violence in Assam has been illegal migration from Bangladesh. For the sake of votes, the ruling party has not only been turning a Nelson's eye to the problem but has been encouraging it.

The influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh into Assam continues unabated. The demographic contour of all the border districts, particularly in Lower Assam has changed radically. In many of these districts Bangladeshis are now in a majority.

The district of Dhubri which abuts the sensitive Siliguri corridor, called the Chicken Neck, has a 70% Bangladeshi Muslim population. The consequence of this for the entire land mass of the North East can be most serious. It vitally affects not only the people of Assam but the entire Nation. Apart from the Government required totake stringent measures against Jehadi terrorism all the country, it must take prompt concrete measures on a war footing, to counter the unabated influx of illegal migrants from Bangladesh into Assam.


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