Former army chief General Dalbir Singh appointed Indian envoy to Seychelles

Former army chief General Dalbir Singh was on Thursday named as the Indian high commissioner India to Seychelles, an Indian Ocean island nation. A ministry of external affairs statement said Gen Singh is expected to take up the assignment shortly.

Gen Singh was the army chief when India carried out surgical strikes against terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in September 2016. The strikes were carried in response to the Uri terror attack in which 19 soldiers were killed.

His appointment is being seen as recognition of his achievements when he was the army chief from 2014 to 2016. It was also during Singh’s tenure that India’s Special Forces carried out a cross-border raid into Myanmar in 2015 to destroy militant camps to avenge the killing of 18 Indian soldiers in an ambush in Manipur’s Chandel district.

Defence and security form an important pillar of the bilateral relationship between Indian and Seychelles and Singh’s appointment could help cement the ties further. In June 2018, India and Seychelles said they would work together on developing a naval base on Assumption Island while keeping “each other’s interests” in mind, days after reports suggested the Indian Ocean nation had scrapped an agreement on the project. Experts said the base would help India counter growing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean region, although no progress has been made on the project. The PM had then also announced a $100-million line of credit for Seychelles to buy Indian defence equipment to boost its maritime capacity. Former navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma was appointed as high commissioner of India to Canada in 2012. He held the post for the next three years.