New Delhi: Former Army Chief General MM Naravane's much awaited memoir 'Four Stars of Destiny', which was due to be released on Army Day celebrations on Jan 15, has been delayed with E-commerce giant Amazon canceling orders for the book for now. The much awiated memoir, which awaits clearance from the Ministry of Defense and the Indian Army, will now be available only from April 30.
The upcoming book contains a series of revelations on several key issues including the Chinese troop movement along the LAC in Aug 2020 and the controversial Agnipath scheme. On Agnipath scheme, the former Army Chief had said that "Army was taken by surprise" by the policy, but for the other two services, it came like a “bolt from the blue”. On the skirmishes at Line of Actual Control (LAC) and the Galwan valley incident, according to the excerpts , Defense Minister Rajnath Singh had told Naravane "Jo ucchit samjho woh karo (Do whatever you deem appropriate)" on the night of August 31, 2020, following a tense situation arising out of Chinese PLA moving tanks and troops in Rechin La mountain pass on the LAC in eastern Ladakh.
Naravane further writes in the book that there was a flurry of calls between the Defence Minister, External Affairs Minister, the National Security Advisor and the Chief of Defence Staff that night on the sensitive situation. After Defense Minister Rajnath Singh's call, Naravane says a hundred different thoughts "flashed through" his mind. "I conveyed the criticality of the situation to the RM (Raksha Mantri), who said he would get back to me, which he did, by about 2230 hours," Naravane wrote.
"I had been handed a hot potato. With this carte blanche, the onus was now totally on me. I took a deep breath and sat silently for a few minutes. All was quiet save for the ticking of the wall clock," he writes in the book. It is pertinent to note here that Army Chief General Manoj Pandey addressing media on January 11 had said that the "final framework structure of the Agnipath scheme that came about, it happened after an iterative process and consultations and it took into account whatever issues we had to put across."
General Pande's remarks came after media personnel asked the army chief on his predecessor's (Naravane) remarks on the Agnipath scheme.
