In announcing the appointment of Lt Gen Dhiraj Seth as the next Chief of the Army Staff as incumbent General Upendra Dwivedi is set to retire on June 30, the government has followed the long-standing practice of elevating the senior-most officer, though there is only a narrow gap in seniority between the two top contenders.
Lt Gen Dhiraj Seth, the current Vice Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Army Staff designate, and Lt Gen Manjinder Singh, serving as General Officer Commanding-in-Chief (GOC-in-C), South Western Command, were both commissioned from the Indian Military Academy (IMA) on December 20, 1986.
While both officers are highly experienced and have held key command and staff appointments, Lt Gen Seth edged ahead on two parameters — his personal service number and his appointment as Army Commander earlier in the sequence.
Lt Gen Seth was appointed GOC-in-C of the South Western Command in Jaipur on November 1, 2023, while Lt Gen Manjinder Singh was appointed GOC-in-C of the Army Training Command in Shimla on December 1, 2023. Subsequently, Lt Gen Seth was moved as GOC-in-C, Southern Command in Pune, while Lt Gen Manjinder Singh was posted from Shimla to Jaipur to succeed him.
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In terms of personal service numbers, or “IC numbers”, Lt Gen Seth is senior by 21 positions, according to publicly available details. IC numbers are allotted based on a cadet’s position in the order of merit at the time of commissioning from the academy and are used as a key determinant of seniority when other parameters are similar.
At the time of selecting the Army Chief, the government considers the Vice Chief and all Army Commander–rank officers, with seniority-cum-merit as the guiding principle. The Vice Chief and all GOC-in-Cs are considered equivalent in rank for this purpose.
At present, the Army has nine officers of Army Commander rank, forming the apex leadership echelon. These include the Vice Chief, the GOC-in-Cs of six operational commands and one training command. In addition, the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Forces Command — a tri-service post currently held by an Army officer — is part of this group.
Among them, Lt Gen Seth and Lt Gen Manjinder Singh are the senior-most, while the remaining officers were commissioned in 1987 and 1988.
The practice of appointing the senior-most eligible Army Commander has largely been followed by the government, barring a few exceptions. The last major deviation from the principle of seniority was in 2016, when Gen Bipin Rawat, who later became the first Chief of Defence Staff, was appointed Army Chief, superseding two other Army Commanders.
