Army’s payoff scandal rattles politicians

Sep 24, 2013

Tags:

New Delhi: A massive row broke out on Tuesday over former Army chief Gen. (retd.) V.K. Singh’s revelation that the Army transfers money to politicians in Jammu and Kashmir as part of “stabilising work.”
While an embarrassed Union Minister Farooq Abdullah, whose son Omar Abdullah rules J&K, has demanded a probe into Gen Singh’s charge, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde asked the General to reveal the names of the ministers who got Army money so that an enquiry could be ordered. Farooq called Gen Singh’s statement `terrible’ and `sad’, saying the Army has to remain apolitical.
An embattled National Conference, badgered by the Opposition Panther’s Party, demanded a CBI enquiry.
The former Army Chief implied that both the defence minister and the J&K CM must be aware of the practice and added, “This has not been invented by Gen. V.K. Singh.” He also insisted that such payments did “not constitute interference” in the affairs of the civilian government in the state and added that this was meant to assist them.
General Singh’s revelations came after he was asked about an Army report that purportedly mentioned that more than Rs 1 crore was paid to a minister in J&K by the Technical Support Division (TSD) — a controversial military intelligence unit that was created during the tenure of Gen. Singh but which has now been disbanded.
He denied that any attempt was made to topple the J&K government by the TSD, as allegedly claimed in the report.
Gen. (retd.) Singh said this is practice has been going on “since Independence”. He also said that there are systems in place to ensure that the money was accounted for, with proper receipts given.
Gen. Singh also mentioned the organisation of protests in favour of the J&K government and described a Kashmiri politician — Ghulam Hassan Mir —as a “nationalist” politician.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/258796" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-5fed3f7660e2a0c57e9d110d6c1e45e4" value="form-5fed3f7660e2a0c57e9d110d6c1e45e4" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85424942" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>