General Tejinder Singh’s fortunes come a full circle

From once being tipped to head the technical intelligence agency NTRO (National Technical Research Organization) to the eye of a bribery scandal raised by the Army chief V K Singh, life seems to have come a full circle for retd Lieutenant General Tejinder Singh.

It has been a wild swing of fortunes for him since TOI exposed the Adarsh Housing Scam in October, 2010.

Defence minister A K Antony on Tuesday formally named Lt Gen Tejinder Singh, who held crucial appointments, including the command of a frontline corps, during his long career in the Army, in the Rajya Sabha as the man who offered the Rs 14 crore bribe to Gen Singh for clearing the purchase of Tatra vehicles.

In 2010, when his name figured among the owners of apartments in Adarsh Society, the Centre moved swiftly to end the proposal for appointing Singh as the NTRO chief. He had only retired a few months earlier as the chief of Defence Intelligence Agency, the tri-service intelligence agency set up after the Kargil conflict of 1999, after taking charge of it in October 2008.

According to sources, the purported meeting between Army chief Gen Singh and Tejinder Singh took place sometime in September, 2010. The Army chief says, he had asked Tejinder to get out of his office when he offered him the bribe and also immediately reported the matter to Antony.

The meeting was filed by the Army chief in his memory for over a year-and-a-half. Now, with Gen Singh discussing the meeting in public, Tejinder Singh is back in public scrutiny, and the focus of a CBI probe.

For those, who have been closely watching the Army chief’s age controversy, there is another sub-text to the entire issue involving Tejinder Singh. And what happened over the past year or so, when Gen Singh went all out to establish that his year of birth was 1951, may have contributed to the Army chief’s decision to discuss the bribe offer now.

Tejinder Singh was among those at the forefront of an anti-Gen Singh campaign, distributing a host of documents to mediapersons to rubbish his claim. Those close to the Army chief also suspect that Tejinder was also the key player who prompted some of the most damaging articles against Gen Singh.

Tejinder has initiated legal proceedings for defamation against the Army chief and others, but it may not mean much since the CBI has begun a probe into the bribery case.

-via The Times of India.

Asked Army chief to take action, he refused, says Defence Minister on bribe bomb

Sandeep Phukan.

Defence Minister AK Antony today told Parliament that the Army chief refused to take action after being offered a Rs. 14-crore bribe in 2010. “I was shocked. I told him to take action, but he said ‘I refuse to pursue the matter’,” the minister said.

The minister also said that the Army chief, General VK Singh, had told him that the lobbyist who offered him the kickback was Tejinder Singh, who had retired as Lieutenant-General and was not in service when he allegedly offered the chief the money. In an interview to NDTV yesterday, the retired officer said he has never offered a bribe to the Army chief. Speaking to NDTV, Mr Singh said today that he had no animosity toward the Army chief but his lawyers have filed a defamation suit against General Singh.

A CBI inquiry was ordered yesterday by the Defence Minister after General Singh went public with media interviews about the bribe that was offered to him. The CBI investigation will swing into operation after General Singh provides a written account of what happened. Explaining why he did not commission an inquiry earlier, Mr Antony told Parliament that he had not received a written complaint from the chief.

Mr Antony’s remarks push the ball back into the chief’s court and provide the latest expression to the strained relationship between the Defence Ministry and the Army chief. Yesterday, General Singh said that after he was visited in his office by a retired officer and offered a kickback to clear the purchase of 600 “sub-standard trucks,” he had alerted the minister. Both the Congress and the BJP have said he should have filed a police case against the lobbyist for attempting to bribe a government servant.

“I will go to any extent to investigate the Army chief’s allegations… all my life, I have fought against corruption” said Mr Antony, saying that he follows up even on anonymous letters that allege graft. He said he is ready to cancel any contract tainted by corruption. The BJP’s Arun Jaitley responded in Parliament by saying that his party is willing to work with the government to “cleanse corruption” but he also said that it is the government’s job to distinguish between frivolous and substantive charges. “There is eventually civilian control of armed forces…issues that should be settled in closed doors are becoming a public debate which in case of armed forces should be avoided,” said Mr Jaitley. He added that the government and the Army chief “should not have put blinkers on their eyes. This is learning to live with corruption,” he said.

Mr Antony’s comments today expose the latest installment of the trust deficit between the Army chief and the Defence Ministry. Their relationship was heavily frayed by a year-long battle over General Singh’s age, which culminated with the with the chief taking the government to court in January to accept his claim that he was born in 1951 and not 1950, which is his year of birth according to the government. The issue could have affected when he would have to retire. The General withdrew his petition after Supreme Court judges suggested they would not be able to rule in his favour. General Singh will step down at the end of May.

The Army in a press release earlier this month blamed Lt General (retired) Tejinder Singh for offering bribes on behalf of Tatra and Vectra, which provides trucks to the Army via a government-owned company called Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML).

General Singh said in an interview yesterday that Rs. 14 crore was offered to him to clear the purchase of 600 “sub-standard” Tatra trucks. At the time, he said, 7000 trucks were already in use by the Army. But the Defence Ministry says that the Army has never complained about the performance of Tatra’s heavy vehicles.

-via NDTV