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| Vice-Admiral Sureesh Mehta |
New Delhi, Sept. 1: Vice-Admiral Sureesh Mehta, currently head of the Eastern Command, has been named the next chief of naval staff.
Admiral Arun Prakash, the current chief, will be retiring on October 31. Mehta’s is the most important of a number of new appointments announced at armed forces headquarters.
Admiral Prakash will pass on the baton as the chairman, chiefs of staff committee, to the chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi.
Mehta commanded the “sword arm” of the navy, the western fleet, during Operation Parakram (2001-2002) after which he has been the director-general, Coast Guard, chief of personnel at naval headquarters and deputy chief of naval staff. He took over as flag officer commanding-in-chief of the Eastern Naval Command in September 2005.
The 59-year-old officer is an aviator and was one of the first to join the fleet air arm. He flew many missions from the INS Vikrant.
The Coast Guard also has a new chief. Vice-Admiral Rustom Faramroze Contractor has taken over as the new director-general in place of Prabhakaran Paleri who has retired. Paleri was the first chief of the Coast Guard from its own cadre. But the office has again reverted to a naval officer.
Contractor, a specialist in navigation and direction, was the commanding officer of the first offshore patrol vessel, INS Sukanya, which he commissioned in South Korea. He has held the rare distinction of commanding INS Rajput and INS Ranvijay as also the command of the navy’s aircraft carrier and flagship, INS Virat.
Among other key appointments, Lt Gen. Thomas Mathew was appointed the adjutant-general in army headquarters. As a principal staff officer to the army chief, Mathew will oversee the army’s manpower requirement, service conditions, recruitment, discipline, vigilance, ceremonial functions and placement of retiring personnel and widows.
The general officer was commissioned into the Rajput Regiment in December 1968. He has commanded 2 Rajput in Jammu and Kashmir, an infantry division of a strike corps during Operation Parakram and has been the Indian military attaché in France.
Lt Gen. Prakash Singh Chaudhary has taken over as the director-general of the National Cadet Corps. He was an instructor in the National Defence Academy and has been awarded six times for gallantry and distinguished service.
Lt Gen. I.J. Koshy has been appointed director-general (ceremonial, welfare and discipline) at army headquarters. Lt Gen. Arvind Mahajan, the commandant of Military College of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers, is now its director-general.