Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 17 (IANS) A week after the Supreme Court set Indian Army chief Gen. V.K. Singh’s birth date as May 10, 1950, Defence Minister A.K. Antony Friday said it was “a closed chapter” and dismissed suggestions that the controversy had led to straining of relations between the army and the ministry.

“It is over. It is a closed chapter now,” Antony told reporters here on the sidelines of a defence function to a question on whether the age row had caused strains in ties between the army and ministry.

“There is no strain. What we are going to do now is to ask all the armed forces to hereafter make changes in their systems and strictly reconcile different documents so that this kind of conflict of views does not happened in the future,” Antony said.

“We have learned a lesson from this. There is no conflict now. Work is going on. It was a personal matter and unfortunately it happened because of two dates of birth in the army,” he said.

Antony also appealed to all not to raise the issue again. “Don’t rake up the issue now. It is over. Look at the country’s interest. India cannot afford such controversy in the future. We must always look at national interest,” he added.

The Supreme Court had told the army chief that his date of birth will remain May 10, 1950 in the service records, following which he withdrew his petition that sought a direction to the defence ministry to reconcile the records in accordance with his birth and school certificates, which had May 10, 1951 as the birth date.

The defence ministry had last year refused to entertain the army chief’s request in this regard following which he filed the petition in the Supreme Court on Jan 16 this year.