Lieutenant General Manoj Pande has been appointed as the next Chief of the Indian Army. The 28th Army Chief will be the first Officer from the Corps of Engineers to become the Chief of Army Staff succeeding General Manoj Mukund Naravane who is scheduled to complete his 28-month tenure on April 30, local media reported.
“Government has decided to appoint Lt General Manoj Pande as the next Chief of Army Staff,” the Defence Ministry announced on Monday.
Born 6 May 1962, Lieutenant General Manoj Chandrashekhar Pande is a serving General Officer in the Indian Army. He is currently serving as the Vice Chief of the Army Staff since 1 February 2022. Previously, he served as the General Officer-Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command, having taken over on 1 June 2021. He previously commanded the Andaman and Nicobar Command as the Commander-in-Chief (CINCAN).
An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Pande was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers in December 1982. Lt General Manoj Pande commanded an engineer regiment during Operation Parakram in the Pallanwala sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Operation Parakram, the large-scale mobilisation of troops and weapons to the western border, followed the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
In his 39-year military career, Lt General Pande has commanded an engineer brigade in the western theatre, an infantry brigade along LoC, a mountain division in the Ladakh sector and a corps in the northeast. He was the commander-in-chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command before he took charge of the Eastern Command.
