In 1983, Lt Gen SK Sinha, who was an outstanding senior officer, was to be appointed as the Army chief to succeed General KV Krishna. However, the then Indira Gandhi Government appointed General AS Vaidya, who was junior to Lt Gen Sinha. The reason given by the Government was that it did not want an officer of Sinha's cadre to be the chief of Army as he lacked active service in operations. However, many believed that the Government was discomforted with Lt Gen Sinha as he had the courage to stand up for soldiers' rights. Eventually, he quit.
In 1991, there was a considerable hand-holding from a newly-installed Narasimha Rao Government for the appointment of Air Chief Marshal Nirmal Chandra Suri. Air Marshal Suri, (number two in the hierarchy) was retiring on the same day as his boss, Air Chief Marshal, SK Mehra. But the latter obliged by demitting office in the forenoon on July 31, 1991. The resultant was that Suri became the Air Force chief, superseding Air Marshal PK De. Thereafter, Suri picked up an additional two years of service which a service chief is entitled to.
More recently, in April 2014, the UPA Government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appointed Admiral Robin Dhowan as the Navy chief, instead of Western Naval Command chief Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha. The Government came up with a bizarre logic for his supersession: It claimed that under Admiral Sinha as the Flag Officer of Western Command, there had been many accidents, for which he was to be blamed. Admiral Dhowan was six months junior to Vice Admiral Sinha. After facing humiliation, Vice Admiral Sinha opted for voluntary retirement and also suffered a heart attack.
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