General Upendra Dwivedi to take over as army vice chief

Northern Army commander Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi will take over as the army’s vice chief on February 15, replacing Lieutenant General MV Suchindra Kumar, officials aware of the matter said on Monday.
The two generals will swap positions, with Kumar moving to the Udhampur-based Northern Command as its General Officer Commanding-in-Chief next week, the officials said, asking not to be named.
Dwivedi is the frontrunner for the post of army chief as he will be the senior-most general when General Manoj Pande retires on May 31, 2024. He is an alumnus of Sainik School, Rewa, National Defence Academy, and Indian Military Academy.
He took charge of the operationally critical Northern Command in February 2022.
Dwivedi has earlier served as a deputy chief in the Army Headquarters, the General Officer Commanding of the Yol-based HQs 9 Corps and director general of infantry. He was commissioned into the 18th Battalion of the Jammu and Kashmir Rifles in December 1984.
The Northern Command is responsible for guarding the country’s borders with Pakistan and China in the north, and is the nerve centre of counter-terrorism operations in Jammu and Kashmir.
Kumar takes over the reins of the Northern Command at a time when India and China have been locked in a dragging military standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since May 2020, and a full resolution of the border crisis through ongoing negotiations still appears elusive. The situation along LAC in the Ladakh sector is “stable, yet sensitive,” Pande said in January.
Despite four rounds of disengagement from Galwan Valley, Pangong Tso, Gogra (PP-17A) and Hot Springs (PP-15), the Indian and Chinese armies still have tens of thousands of troops each and advanced weaponry deployed in the Ladakh theatre. The Indian and Chinese armies have held multiple rounds of talks, but problems at Depsang and Demchok are still on the negotiating table.