Palak Gupta

For a chilly winter day, the morning of 11 January 2020 was full of hustle-and-bustle. A slew of vehicles and crowd of people lined up outside and inside the gates of the sprawling Manekshaw Centre in Delhi.

The place teemed with smartly-dressed senior officers of the Indian Army, invited guests and mediapersons, all of whom had gathered for a special occasion. Army Chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane, who took over as the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) on 31 December 2019, was about to hold his first press conference ahead of the 72^nd Army Day on January 15.

We collected our collaterals (a notepad, a pen and a numbered tennis-racket shaped cardboard) and headed straight to the auditorium. Journalists were required to raise their numbered racket during the presser when they had a question for the COAS.

Scheduled to start at 11 am, the press conference, began only at 11.55am. General Naravane greeted the audience and began his address by swearing the allegiance of forces to the Indian Constitution, steering his institution away from allegations of politicisation and setting a tone different from his predecessor General Bipin Rawat, who is now India’s first Chief of Defence Staff.

So, when General Naravane was asked if he would also follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, he said, “Indian Army believes in doing its job and we are not seeking any publicity. We will continue in the same way of serving the nation to the best of our ability.”

His opening statement was crisp, and matter of fact. The COAS had eloquently defined the lines around which his 28-month long tenure will be centred — ‘ABC’. A st