In two days, there have been as many verdicts on senior military appointments that there is now a crisis of sorts building up in the Army and Navy. On December 9, the government cleared the appointment of Vice Admiral Harinder Singh as Deputy Chief of Naval Staff despite objections by the Navy Chief. And on December 11, the Delhi High Court ruled that Lt Gen R S Kadyan be made the Eastern Army Commander.

According to a news agency report today, Solicitor General Santosh Hegde said that the government will appeal against the HC order to a division bench of the court. The court had quashed Lt Gen H R Kalkat's appointment as Eastern Army Commander and directed Army headquarters to appoint Lt Gen Kadyan as he was ``wrongly superseded.''

These two developments have far-reaching consequences for the state of the armed forcesand are certain to create more problems then they seek to resolve, for the services, as well as relations between the armed forces and the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

In the first case, the MoD sponsored the name of Vice Admiral Harinder Singh to the Appointments Committee of Cabinet despite the fact that Navy regulationsapproved by Parliament in 1965determine that appointments have first to be recommended by the Chief of Naval Staff. Incidentally, The Regulations for the Navy, published by the MoD, says that ``appointments of officers of all branches of the rank of Captain and above, shall be made by the Government on the recommendation of the Chief of the Naval Staff.' Since it is well known that the Navy Chief did not recommended the name of Vice Admiral Harinder Singh, it's apparent that the government has violated this regulation.

Former Defence Minister, late Jagjivan Ram, is known to have noted, on file: ``I accept the dictates of Statute...which specifies that in the case of appointment of a NavalOfficer, it is Naval HQ who has to make a proposal and the Ministry of Defence is to only accept it or return the same with appropriate queries if any. The right for proposal in appointment of a Naval Officer is of CNS/NHQ. Any change in the existing proposal may affect the ethos and day to day administration of the service''.

Ironically, the MoD used this argument in the Kadyan case. An Under Secretary, in a counter affidavit in the Delhi High Court in the case filed by Lt Gen R S Kadyan, said: ``the selection to the post/appointment...is approved by the Appointment Committee of the Cabinet based on the recommendations of the Chief of Army Staff who makes his assessment of the officer based on merit-cum-suitability for the post under consideration.'' He went on to declare that ``merit and suitability (have) never been compromised for seniority.''

However, in sponsoring the case of Vice Admiral Harinder Singh, the MoD went back on this argument to the Delhi High Court and put forth the seniority angle.Meanwhile, anxiety in the armed forces has only deepened, for a crisis is looming large. Transcripts of recorded telephone conversations made available to The Indian Express between Vice Admiral Harinder Singh and three senior Naval officers merely serves to highlight the tensions and anxieties confronting the service.