Prince Charles with JJ Singh and his wife Anupama during a reception at the residence of the British high commissioner in Delhi on Friday.

New Delhi, Nov. 9: Using books as brickbats, the General-versus-General war is now out in the open with two former army chiefs hurling charges at each other following the publication of General V.K. Singh’s tome this week.

V.K. Singh was the chief of army staff from March 31, 2010, to May 31, 2012.

General J.J. Singh, who was till recently the governor of Arunachal Pradesh, had been the army chief from February 1, 2005, to September 30, 2007.

But in his book, V.K. Singh erroneously writes (in Page 265) that J.J. Singh had taken over as the chief of army staff in 2004. General N.C. Vij was the army chief in 2004.

V.K. Singh, who was 11 batches junior to J.J. Singh in the National Defence Academy, has alleged that J.J. Singh had manipulated his date of birth. This was done, he has insinuated, to fix his tenure in a way that General Bikram Singh could take over as the army chief.

File picture of VK Singh. (PTI)

An arms lobby represented by a retired lieutenant general (Tejinder Singh) and a former official in the Prime Minister’s Office were also involved, he has alleged.

“It is now an established fact that he (Gen. JJ) had, within months of taking charge, initiated the ‘look down policy’ that would give a clear idea as to what the line of succession would, or could, be,” V.K. Singh writes in his autobiography, Courage and Conviction, co-authored with Kunal Verma and published by the Aleph Book Company.

“He has neither courage, nor conviction and nor is he correct,” an indignant J.J. Singh told The Telegraph this morning after reading reports on the book. He said he was yet to read the book.

Although both served in the army for 40 or more years, the two generals barely knew each other personally. “My interaction with General JJ Singh had been minimal, and we had the usual formal and cordial relationship that exists between a senior and a subordinate officer,” writes V.K. Singh.

J.J. Singh also said that he hardly knew V.K. Singh. His own autobiography, A Soldier’s General, published by Harper Collins, came out last year.

In the book, published shortly after V.K. Singh had challenged the government in Supreme Court before withdrawing the petition, J.J. Singh wrote that he never corresponded directly with his subordinate officer. He also wrote that V.K. Singh never sent him a non-statutory complaint against the alleged error in the records of the military secretary’s branch on his date of birth.

Two branches of army headquarters had different dates of birth — May 10, 1951, and May 10, 1950 — for V.K. Singh. He said he was born in 1951 and sought a “correction” in the records. When refused, he sued the government. But the Supreme Court asked him to withdraw the petition, questioning why he was raising the controversy after having earlier accepted the 1950 date and risen to be army chief on the basis of the same.

In his book, J.J. Singh wrote that V.K. Singh’s charge “that this issue was raked up by me in 2006 with a ‘succession plan’ and parochial agenda in mind are preposterous, malicious and incorrect to say the least”.

It was he who recommended V.K. Singh, then a lieutenant general, as commander of the elite II strike corps, J.J. Singh wrote. He had also asked V.K. Singh to be part of his delegation when he visited the UK and Oman.

J.J. Singh illustrated what he believed to be officer-like behaviour with the example of Lt Gen. S.K. Sinha.

Sinha, who was the governor of Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, quit service in 1983 after he was superseded when Indira Gandhi appointed General A.S. Vaidya as the army chief.

In his book, V.K. Singh says the idea of quitting office did occur to him after the Supreme Court asked him to withdraw his petition. But President Pratibha Patil, who was then supreme commander of the armed forces, had urged him not to.

V.K. Singh also paints a picture of defence minister A.K. Antony as a weakling. “A.K. Antony was a highly accomplished person who had also been the chief minister of Kerala. But he couldn’t always get around the mafia of babus. Despite all the good intentions on his part, he too was a victim, unable to break free from the shackles of babudom”, he writes.