NEW DELHI: The Defence Ministry has rejected General V K Singh’s statutory complaint to consider May 10, 1951 as his date of birth and conveyed to him that he will have to retire on May 31 next year.
Singh had filed the statutory complaint with Defence Minister A K Antony, the first chief of the 1.2 million-strong army to do so, after the government on July 21 issued an order saying that it will consider May 10, 1950 as his date of birth, which would have denied him another ten months in office.
The Ministry’s decision on the issue of his date of birth was today conveyed to the army chief, sources said here. After the Ministry decision on the statutory complaint, the army chief has exhausted the in-house remedies available to him and can approach a court of law which can either be the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) or the High Court.
The sources said the Ministry has taken the decision of considering May 10, 1950 as his date of birth on the basis of the third opinion given by the Attorney General (AG).
The AG had recently given his opinion on the statutory complaint filed by the army chief where he stuck to his earlier two opinions against giving any relief to the General.
After these developments in Defence Ministry headquarters in South Block, the army chief went to meet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
After the meeting, he denied having any information about Defence Ministry’s decision on his age issue.
On December 16 also, the army chief had held a meeting with Mukherjee after discussing his age issue at length with the Defence Minister. Mukherjee was the Defence Minister when the controversy over army chief’s age erupted in 2005 at the time of his appointment as Corps Commander of a Strike Corps. (PTI)