india

Updated: Apr 23, 2019 09:56 IST

Ten days after he filed a statutory complaint to defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman against his supersession, Vice-Admiral Bimal Verma will on Tuesday come face-to-face with the junior officer, Vice-Admiral Karambir Singh, who was named as the next navy chief by the government last week, officials familiar with the matter said.

The two top admirals are among the battery of senior navy officials who will attend the biannual Naval Commanders’ Conference in New Delhi from April 23 to April 25.

Verma, who heads the Andaman and Nicobar Command in Port Blair, would have been the senior-most officer in the navy on May 31 when Admiral Sunil Lanba retires. But the government last month decided against appointing him and opted for Singh. Singh currently heads the Visakhapatnam-based Eastern Naval Command. Before filing his complaint to the defence minister, Verma had petitioned the Armed Forces Tribunal against his supersession. But the principal bench of the AFT asked him to withdraw his plea, saying he should raise the issue with the defence ministry first.

During the three-day conference, the navy top brass will review major operational, logistics, human resource, training and administrative activities undertaken during the last six months and deliberate upon the course to be steered in the next six, said one of the navy officials cited above. “The conference assumes greater significance in the backdrop of Pulwama associated events that have brought country’s defence under sharper focus and will provide the higher naval leadership a forum to discuss the emerging challenges in the maritime domain and fine tune the strategies for responding to the evolving geo-strategic environment,” the official added.

Sitharaman is expected to address the navy brass Tuesday.