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Chandigarh: The appointment of Lieutenant General (Retd) N.S. Raja Subramani as India’s next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), announced on Saturday (May 9), has further reinforced a striking pattern linking the Garhwal region and its longstanding martial traditions to the country’s top military post. With his elevation, officers drawn from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region or commissioned into Garhwal-linked regiments have now featured prominently across all three CDS appointments.

Gen Subramani was commissioned into the Garhwal Rifles, while his two predecessors – General Bipin Rawat and later General Anil Chauhan – both hailed from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region, highlighting the remarkable rise of officers from this mountainous belt to India’s topmost military post.

His appointment also marks the third consecutive CDS drawn from the Indian Army, rather than the other two services, despite the post originally being conceived as a tri-service integrator and unifying figure across the armed forces. This nomination had also quietly deepened insecurities within the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy (IN) over the long-term balance of influence within India’s higher defence structure and management.

Both these services had long viewed the CDS as a ‘genuinely tri-service’ appointment intended to rise above single-service institutional identities, but with all three CDSs emerging from the larger Army, concerns have steadily grown within the IAF and Navy that the evolving structure of jointness would increasingly reflect Army-centric strategic priorities and organisational preferences.

And, in yet another striking coincidence, Gen Subramani, like Gen Chauhan, had served as  Military Adviser (MA) to the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) under National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval – an overlap that has drawn raised eyebrows in security circles. It has also reinforced perceptions of an unusually tightly interlinked strategic ecosystem which shapes appointments at the top end of India’s defence hierarchy.

Beyond this, while Gen Bipin Rawat became India’s first CDS in late December 2019, after completing his tenure as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), both his successors have been retired Lieutenant General – rank officers, recalled to service – or to put it bluntly, simply re-commissioned. This has further sharpened perceptions within a tightly structured hierarchical system like the armed forces that such appointment decisions are influenced less by institutional convention, but by a select set of decision-makers seemingly guided by subjective considerations.

Quiet resentment within the narrow military pyramid

Moreover, official sources indicated that these two elevations had also triggered quiet resentment within the narrow military........

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