
Promotion policy review for the army
Suman Sharma / DNA
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:54 IST
New Delhi: The four-day army commanders’ conference that began in New Delhi on Monday will review the new promotion policy, quantified system (QS), which came into effect last year. There could be some modifications based on the feedback sought from the different military wings.
Chief of army staff General VK Singh will review the policy. He has asked the military secretary for the policy letter based on which QS was evolved.
The new system, adopted after its success in the Medical Corps, grades officers on a computerised scale of 100, of which 90 marks are for annual confidential reports (ACRs), five for awards, honours and courses undergone, and the remaining are decided by the board members (or selectors). If the board members feel an officer has been wrongly judged, they can rectify his report by giving him the 5% marks at their disposal.
Earlier there was no value attached to attributes of an officer being evaluated and each parameter of an officer was taken into consideration as part of the complete report, called the -annual confidential report (ACR) being assessed by a competent authority. The ACR of any officer goes through atleast three levels, which means it is written and reviewed by three competent authorities, which are the Initiating Officer, Reviewing Officer and the Senior Reviewing Officer.
Two Boards each for every rank have been conducted in this one year plus, which are from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel, Colonel to Brigadier, Brigadier to Major General and Major General to Lieutenant General, all of which have been through the new system.
The previous system did not have a computerised order of merit, and had manual computation for selecting officers for the next rank, which in most cases was found wanting as a personal angle or a human factor would find itself weighing on the decision of the selectors, thereby prompting young officers to make complaints if they missed their next ranks. Therefore a quantity or value was given to all the attributes, like annual reports, awards, courses etc, so as to avoid the human error factor, and the computer was left to do the calculation and come up with a merit, of those to be selected
A year later, QS has been found unsuitable for senior ranks as pointed out by all formations of the army. An officer said, “The system is good for junior officers such as those being promoted from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel and from Colonel to Brigadier, but not for higher ranks. In higher ranks, the number of reports written is less. If an officer misses out on even one report, he is out. In junior selection, an officer has more years to perform and subsequently, more ACRs, he has a lot of time to prove himself and earn better reports.”
Though the new system did bring down some complaints at the junior level, but at the senior level since the Board members are senior officers and at some level those officers coming up for senior rank selection would have served under them at some point of time, it helps them assess better, since those officers are known to them, if their previous reports do not have a high ranking. Anomalies can be removed if any, if more weightage is with the selectors, unlike now where they are left only with five percent. Formations have written that more weightage be with the selectors or Board members so that reports can be rectified if there are anomalies or short comings seen in it.
With the increase in the number of vacancies in the higher ranks, after the AV Singh-II recommendations, the selection Boards for senior officers' promotions are being held twice a year, said an officer, especially number 1 SB (Selection Board), and Special Selection Board (SSB) which is for promoting Major Generals to Lieutenant Generals. Number 1 SB is for Brigadiers to Major Generals, number 2 SB for Colonels to Brigadiers and number 3 SB is for Lieutenant Colonels to Colonels. Out of all those being considered for promotion, atleast 50 percent officers make it to the next rank.
Earlier officers made it to anywhere between six and eight on a nine-pointer scale in their ACRs (annual confidential reports) and a few sevens often became the reason for rejection of an officer in a Board and be deemed unfit for the next rank which could be an error or even a senior's grudge towards a junior officer, who's ACR he was writing, which was thoughfully taken care of by the Army by computerisation, and helped at the junior rank selection level.
Any selection Board comprises officers senior by two ranks to the officers to be assessed, and generally has a strength of five officers in the panel.
Awards and honours too have weightage, in which distinguished awards for service like VSM (Vishisht Sewa Medal) and PVSM (Param Vishisht Sewa Medal) are considered only for the immediate rank for which the officer is competing, while gallantry awards are considered for the next two ranks, during promotion.
A LtCol remains in his rank for at atleast four years or more before coming up for promotion, while a Colonel too has that much time in his rank, but Brigadier and Major Generals hardly have a couple of years in which either they make it or miss the next rank.