Major reshuffle in Indian military: General Dhiraj Seth takes charge as 31st Army chief, top commanders appointed

Gen Dhiraj Seth with senior officers. (Photo: Indian Army) 

New Delhi: General Dhiraj Seth on Tuesday took over as the 31st chief of the Army staff, becoming the first officer from the Armoured Corps to lead the Indian Army in nearly three decades. The change of command, conducted on the South Block lawns, saw the outgoing chief, General Upendra Dwivedi, receive a ceremonial guard of honour before stepping down after more than four decades in uniform.

General Seth’s elevation completes a reshuffle that ripples through several of the Army’s most senior postings and arrives close on the heels of leadership changes at the very apex of the country’s defence establishment, where General NS Raja Subramani took over as chief of defence staff and Admiral Krishna Swaminathan assumed charge as the Navy chief barely a month ago.

An alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, Seth was commissioned into the Armoured Corps in December 1986. He is the first officer from that arm to head the Army since General Shankar Roychowdhary retired in September 1997. Over a near four-decade career, Seth built a profile spanning conventional operations, counter-insurgency deployments and senior staff appointments, and is among the few officers to have commanded two operational army commands along India’s western front with Pakistan – first the Jaipur-based South Western Command, which he took over in November 2023, and subsequently the Pune-based Southern Command.

He moved into the post of vice chief of the army staff on April 1, 2026, the role from which he now ascends to the top job.

The reshuffle does not end with the chief’s chair. Lieutenant General Sandeep Jain, who had been serving as the general officer commanding-in-chief of Southern Command since April 1, 2026, moves up to replace Seth as the vice chief of the army staff.

Filling the vacancy Jain leaves behind, Lieutenant General Rajesh Pushkar, presently commanding the Ambala-headquartered II Strike Corps, has been named the new Southern Army Commander and is scheduled to take charge in Pune on July 1.

An Armoured Corps officer himself, Pushkar’s elevation continues a notable thread running through this round of appointments, with officers from the mechanized arm gaining ground in some of the Army's most consequential field commands.

Separately, Lieutenant General Mohit Malhotra, currently chief of staff at Eastern Command in Kolkata and also from the Armoured Corps, takes over as the South-Western Army Commander in Jaipur, succeeding Lieutenant General Manjinder Singh, who superannuates on Tuesday.

Malhotra, commissioned into the 47th Armoured Regiment in June 1989, steps into a command responsible for one of the Army's most sensitive operational sectors facing Pakistan.

Parallel changes are under way in the Indian Air Force. Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit takes over as the new vice-chief of the air staff on Wednesday, July 1, and, by seniority, is positioned to succeed the present chief, Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh, when the latter superannuates in October this year.

AM Dixit, commissioned into the fighter stream in December 1986, is currently serving as the chief of the Integrated Defence Staff, a triservices body functioning under the chief of defence staff, where he has been closely involved in advancing jointness among the three services and in laying the groundwork for the proposed theatre commands.

A fighter pilot by background, he previously commanded the Flight Test Squadron at the Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment in Bengaluru and served as deputy chief of the air staff from May 2023.

With theatre commands and force modernization high on the agenda, the new leadership will be expected to carry forward reforms that have, until now, moved in fits and starts across the three services.