Bhubaneswar, January 27: Odia Army officer Lt General Chandi Prasad Mohanty will take over as the next Vice Chief of Army Staff on February 1. He is presently serving as the Southern Army Commander and would be succeeding Lt Gen SK Saini on his superannuation.
The highly decorated Army officer Mohanty is from Jagatsinghpur in Odisha. He will be the first Odia officer to be appointed as the Vice Chief, the second highest appointment in Indian Army after Chief of Army Staff.
Newly-appointed Vice Chief of Army Staff Lt Gen Chandi Prasad Mohanty on Thursday took a walk down his ancestral village as well the memory lane. Mohanty visited native Jayabada and interacted with villagers who were elated to see the son of the soil.
In his 37-year-old Army stint, Mohanty spearheaded several key assignments, including commanding a battalion on Line of Control (LoC) in regions of Jammu and Kashmir, counter insurgency operations in the North East.
Mohanty is the cousin brother of senior Odia IPS officer Soumendra Kumar Priyadarshi and son of retired senior State Government officer Jitendra Kumar Mohanty and late professor Sarada Mohanty.
