Union Minister of State for External Affairs, General V K Singh has refused to order the deployment of Army in Naxal-hit Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. Besides, he even offered to quit the post of General of India Army after dissenters questioned his integrity and honesty.
These are some of the interesting revelations made in the autobiography of the former Indian General who is now a Union minister. The Hindi version of the autobiography named ‘Sahas evam Sankalp ‘ was released by Governor Ram Naik at the Raj Bhawan in presence of several BJP MPs, legislators and senior leaders. For Statistics and Programme Implementation (Independent charge) and minister of state
The book highlights how the General flatly refused to press Army personnel into service after a massacre by the Naxalites in Dandewada a couple of years back. Earlier in 2010, when someone commented said that his chair has a value, General Singh offerered to resign immediately which was however not accepted by the then Defence Minister.
In his address, the Governor lauded General Singh first for serving the nation as an Army officer and now serving the people by being their public representative. Naik even pointed out about the role of General Singh in sending Peace Keeping Force to Sri lanka which later emerged as a major reason for the assassination of former PM Rajiv Gandhi. He advised the publisher to get the book translated in regional languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali etc so that people could know about the functioning of the Army.
“General Singh has expressed his ‘ Man Ki Baat’ in his autobiography like Prime Minister Narendra Modi does while interacting with the masses,” Naik said.
later General Singh also shared an anecdote on how he had to convince an Army personnal not to tie an iron pole to an IAF aircraft to be flown from Pune to Chennai. He hinted that his biography offered glimpses of the Indian Army, nitty gritty about actions of senior Army officers and their relation with the political establishment. Talking about his entry in politics, Gneeral Singh said, “ I had two options post-retirement. One, that I enjoyed golf and parties and two, join politics and serve the people and I opted for the latter.” State BJP president laxmikant Vajpayee, lucknow Mayor and BJP’s National vice-president Dinesh Sharma, BJP MPs Jagdambika Pal, Daddan Mishra and Ravindra Kushwaha were also present in the function.