Indian Army gets new Vice Chief: Who is Lieutenant General MV Suchindra Kumar?

Lieutenant General MV Suchindra Kumar was appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff on March 1, 2023. The lieutenant general succeeds Lt General BS Raju, who has taken over the command of Jaipur-based Sapta Shakti of the South Western Army Command. Before being appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff, Lt General MV Suchindra Kumar was the Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Strategy) at Army Headquarters.

Lieutenant General MV Suchindra Kumar has years of experience in intelligence, operations, logistics and force structuring.

Who is Lt General Suchindra Kumar?

Lieutenant General MV Suchindra Kumar is an alumnus of Sainik School, Bijapur in Karnataka and National Defence Academy in Khadakwasla, Pune, Maharashtra. He was commissioned into the 1 Assam regiment in June 1985. He commanded the 59 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) in Assam, an Infantry Brigade and an Infantry Division on the Line Of Control (LOC) and the highly active White Knight Corps in the Northern Command.

The lieutenant general has held many staff and institutional appointments, including as an instructor at the Infantry School Mhow, and as a senior operations officer in the United Nations sector in Cambodia.

He was a Colonel in the military secret branch in the Indian Army training team at Lesotho and also held the post of Brigadier General staff (Operations) of a corps in the Eastern Theatre. He was also the Additional Directorate General of military intelligence and Director General of military intelligence at Army Headquarters in New Delhi.

Lieutenant General Kumar has also attended the defence services staff college course in Wellington, the high command course at  Mhow, National Defence College, New Delhi.

He has also attended several courses in cooperative security in South Asia in Sri Lanka. He has also done a United Nations senior mission leader course in Egypt. Many of his military papers have been published in a number of professional journals.