Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi, currently the Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS), will become the 30th Chief of the Indian Army, succeeding General Manoj Pande, in the afternoon today. Commissioned into the 18 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles or JAK RIF on 15 December 1984, Lt Gen Dwivedi is an alumnus of Sainik School, Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, like the current Indian Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Tripathi. It has been a rare occasion in recent times that two alumni of the same Sainik School will be heading their respective services.
Hailing from the Sainik School Rewa in Madhya Pradesh, Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Tripathi and Army Chief Designate Lt Gen Upendra Dwivedi were together in the school from class 5th-A in the early 1970s. The appointments of the two classmates have also come around the same time, in a gap of around two months. Admiral took over the command of the Indian Navy on 1st May, while Lt Gen Dwivedi would be taking over his new appointment 30th June.
“For the first time in Indian Military history, Chiefs of Navy and Army hail from the same school. This rare honour of nurturing two prodigious students, who would go on to lead their respective Services 50 years later, goes to Sainik School, Rewa in Madhya Pradesh,” Defence Ministry Spokesperson A Bharat Bhushan Babu said in a tweet.
Interestingly, until April, the then-Navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar, Army Chief Gen Manoj Pande, and Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhary all hail from the same NDA Batch. However, the future holds an even more exciting prospect. In a rare coincidence, all future Chiefs are set to be from the same Sainik School, Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, just like Admiral Tripathi. This trend of Chiefs from the same school is a unique and fascinating development.
Being trained together and camaraderie will help forge a unique synergy in ensuring complex defence reforms, such as integration, jointness, and theaterisation of the armed forces, which are currently underway.
Ravi Shankar
