New Delhi, June 18: The defence ministry has rejected the contention that a senior officer with the army-controlled Border Roads Organisation is a “mutineer”.

The charge was levelled against B.B. Lal by the director-general of the Border Roads Organisation, Lieutenant General K.S. Rao, ironically on the 150th anniversary of the “sepoy mutiny”.

After The Telegraph reported it, the BRO headquarters and the defence ministry have received protestations from several civilian cadres in the organisation.

The minister of state for defence, Pallam Raju, and the secretary of the Border Roads Development Board have called a meeting tomorrow in the headquarters of the organisation in Delhi’s Seema Sadak Bhavan.

All 18 chief engineers — nine brigadiers from the army and nine from the General Reserve Engineers Force (GREF), including Lal — have been called to the meeting. Although it is being called a “work conference”, officers have been told that the deliberations will be on the “GREF issue”.

Dissent within the BRO and the cleavage between the army and the GREF have also affected work in BRO projects.

Lt Gen. Rao, asking for the suspension of chief engineer Lal, had told the defence ministry that Lal’s actions “would lead to mutiny”.

Lal, chief engineer of Project Hirak that is overseeing building of roads through Naxalite-influenced districts of central India, had issued an order claiming the rank of a major general in the regular army.

Lt Gen. Rao said he had forwarded copies of the order to all projects and had instructed other officers of the GREF to follow suit and put on ranks on a par with officers of the regular army.

Officers from the GREF, which is also a uniformed force, have said Lal’s order on equivalence of ranks was issued after a government notification in February.

GREF officers have also complained that the director-general of the BRO was doing little to implement the notification. Lt Gen. Rao and the army have argued that equating ranks would “disrupt” discipline.

Defence ministry sources confirmed that Lal has replied after the ministry sought an explanation from him. “But there are also other agencies of government that have a role to play in cadre management,” a source said.