Chandigarh: The appointment of Lieutenant General (Retd) N.S. Raja Subramani as India’s next Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), announced on Saturday (May 9), has further reinforced a striking pattern linking the Garhwal region and its longstanding martial traditions to the country’s top military post. With his elevation, officers drawn from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region or commissioned into Garhwal-linked regiments have now featured prominently across all three CDS appointments.Gen Subramani was commissioned into the Garhwal Rifles, while his two predecessors – General Bipin Rawat and later General Anil Chauhan – both hailed from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region, highlighting the remarkable rise of officers from this mountainous belt to India’s topmost military post.His appointment also marks the third consecutive CDS drawn from the Indian Army, rather than the other two services, despite the post originally being conceived as a tri-service integrator and unifying figure across the armed forces. This nomination had also quietly deepened insecurities within the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Indian Navy (IN) over the long-term balance of influence within India’s higher defence structure and management.Both these services had long viewed the CDS as a ‘genuinely tri-service’ appointment intended to rise above single-service institutional identities, but with all three CDSs emerging from the larger Army, concerns have steadily grown within the IAF and Navy that the evolving structure of jointness would increasingly reflect Army-centric strategic priorities and organisational preferences.And, in yet another striking coincidence, Gen Subramani, like Gen Chauhan, had served as Military Adviser (MA) to the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) under National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval – an overlap that has drawn raised eyebrows in security circles. It has also reinforced perceptions of an unusually tightly interlinked strategic ecosystem which shapes appointments at the top end of India’s defence hierarchy.Beyond this, while Gen Bipin Rawat became India’s first CDS in late December 2019, after completing his tenure as Chief of Army Staff (COAS), both his successors have been retired Lieutenant General – rank officers, recalled to service – or to put it bluntly, simply re-commissioned. This has further sharpened perceptions within a tightly structured hierarchical system like the armed forces that such appointment decisions are influenced less by institutional convention, but by a select set of decision-makers seemingly guided by subjective considerations.Quiet resentment within the narrow military pyramidMoreover, official sources indicated that these two elevations had also triggered quiet resentment within the narrow military pyramid, as both CDS appointees were elevated to four-star rank outside the traditional progression ladder and that too, after retirement. A cross-section of service veterans and serving officers said such appointments only served to ‘further complicate perceptions of career progression norms’ within senior officer cadres, including among serving military chiefs.Against this backdrop, Gen Rawat, hailing from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal region and commissioned into the 5th Battalion, 11 Gorkha Rifles, was India’s first CDS and served until his death in a late 2021 IAF helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu, before completing his full tenure.His successor was retired Lt Gen Chauhan, appointed after a nine-month hiatus in September 2022, also from Uttarakhand and, like Rawat, commissioned into the 11 Gorkha Rifles. Following retirement, Gen Chauhan served as MA to the NSCS under Doval from October 2021 until his appointment as CDS 11 months later.Retired Lt Gen Subramani, for his part, was commissioned into the 8th Battalion, Garhwal Rifles in December 1985 and retired as Vice Chief of Army Staff in July 2025. Appointed MA to NSA Doval the following September, he will now assume office as the next CDS on May 30, less than a year after retirement.According to retired Brigadier Rahul Bhonsle of the Delhi-based Security Risks consultancy group, the rationale for appointing retired officers as CDS, despite the presence of serving chiefs regarded as equally competent, was opaque. He noted that while the appointment norms for the three service chiefs broadly follow an established convention – where the senior-most Lieutenant General or equivalent, who has commanded an operational command, is considered eligible – no similarly defined criteria exists for the post of CDS.“The absence of a transparent selection framework”, he added, “has fuelled perceptions that factors beyond conventional professional progression carry considerable weight in such appointments. Such factors, he sagely declared, were ‘best left unsaid.”Meanwhile, beyond these appointments, the post of CDS created in late 2019 was projected as a watershed and long overdue military reform, intended to fundamentally correct – and rectify-one of India’s most persistent weaknesses: the lack of integration amongst the three services.In conception, the CDS was intended as the single-point military adviser to the government, to drive tri-service synergy, and to push long-delayed reforms such as integrated theatre commands or ITCs and joint logistics and planning. In practice, however, the office’s effectiveness over the past six years has been mixed, constrained as much by institutional resistance as by structural ambiguity.That said, the creation of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), headed by the CDS, did bring the three services under a common bureaucratic umbrella for several categories of procurement, staffing, and policy coordination. Limited progress has also been achieved in areas such as joint training institutions and the gradual development of integrated logistics and communications architectures. In this sense, the CDS has functioned more as an enabler of convergence than as a fully empowered engine of reform.Objective of structural transformation has made little substantive headwayBut the deeper objective of structural transformation – particularly establishing ITCs – has made little substantive headway. Despite repeated announcements, consultations, and committee work, this has been hobbled by inter-service divergence, especially concerns within the IAF over loss of control over scarce and fast-declining combat squadrons, down from sanctioned levels of 45 squadrons to around 29 presently.Gen Chauhan, who retires on May 30, had recently initiated a proposal to the government concerning ITCs, whose details remain undisclosed. Pending approval from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, these are reportedly a renewed attempt at breaking the persistent institutional deadlock over tri-service integration.Essentially, the ITC framework envisages restructuring India’s warfighting architecture into three unified commands: a northern land-focused theatre oriented towards the Chinese frontier, a western theatre centred on Pakistan, and a maritime command responsible for the Indian Ocean Region and broader Indo-Pacific naval domain.Conceptually, this triad is aimed at replacing the existing 17 single-service commands – seven each for the Army and IAF and three for the IN – with integrated operational control, enabling faster decision-making and more efficient use of resources to accelerate rapid and integrated multi-domain warfare across land, air, sea, space and cyber domains.Official sources indicated that the DMA has also struggled over the thorny issue of who would ultimately exercise operational authority over the ITCs. The difficulty arises because the CDS, despite being the senior-most military officer, is structurally limited by the founding mandate of his post to functioning primarily as the government’s principal military adviser rather than as an operational commander.For now, it is believed that theatre commanders under the planned ITC structure are expected to remain at the three-star rank, but preserving a clear hierarchical distinction between service chiefs and theatre-level operational heads. This intended interim arrangement is viewed as a pragmatic compromise, allowing the joint command concept to move forward without immediately unsettling existing power structures or triggering fresh inter-service contention over rank equivalence and authority.However, this delicate balance is widely viewed as provisional. As operational integration deepens and theatre commands begin to assume greater responsibility for warfighting functions, pressure is likely to mount for elevating commanders to four-star status to ensure parity with single-service chiefs and to provide the institutional weight necessary for joint operational decision-making. Such a shift could, in turn, also reopen the larger question of the CDS role itself – potentially pushing it beyond its present “first among equals” conception towards a more clearly elevated, five-star appointment to preserve command hierarchy and coherence within an increasingly integrated structure.India’s military has long wrestled with service jointness.Multi-service bodies such as the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, formed in 2001, the Strategic Forces Command, and the tri-service Andaman and Nicobar Command, intended as test beds for ITCs, had largely failed to perpetuate them.Personnel, fiscal, and institutional issues had further muddled matters. Integrating organisations like the Border Roads Organisation, Indian Coast Guard, and paramilitary forces into ITCs raise service, salary, and retirement complexities. Additionally, existing three-star commanders of 17 single-service commands face displacement, while several prestigious Principal Staff Officers to the respective service Chiefs could become redundant, only fuelling further disaffection and harmony.Additionally, the CDS has had to operate within a deeply entrenched service culture where the Army, IAF and IN retain strong institutional identities and operational autonomies. These identities are not easily subsumed under a unified command structure, particularly in a security environment that still requires domain-specific expertise across land, sea, and air. In effect, the push for jointness has often collided with longstanding inter-service sensitivities, turf considerations, and differing strategic priorities that remain resistant to centralised integration like ITCs.Against this backdrop of slow reform, institutional friction, and evolving command structures, Lt Gen Subramani’s elevation as CDS comes at a time when key military reforms and overall force structure remain largely incomplete and unresolved.In this turbulent setting, he inherits what is widely seen as a heavily loaded deck. And, whether this recommissioned officer can turn long-stalled intent into workable reform, will ultimately determine not just the effectiveness of the CDS office, but whether India’s tri-service transformation finally moves from design to delivery; or remains perpetually in transition in a timeless milieu where today and tomorrow are measured by the same word: kal – the day that has gone, and the day that is yet to come.