Gen Dhiraj Seth Calls on President Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan

Gen Dhiraj Seth called on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday, days after he took charge as the country's senior-most soldier. The President's office confirmed the meeting and put out a photograph of it on X.

He did not come alone. His wife, Komal Seth, was with him for the call.

In its post, the President's Secretariat kept the language plain, noting that the Chief of the Army Staff and his spouse had called on President Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The meeting followed the pattern that senior military appointments in India tend to set, with a new service chief calling on the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces soon after assuming office.



A courtesy call at Rashtrapati Bhavan

The call was short and formal, the kind of interaction that marks the start of a service chief's tenure rather than a working session on any one file. Murmu, as President, holds the office of Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and the meeting placed the new Army chief before her in that capacity within his first week. It came only weeks after the President had conferred wartime and service honours on the commanders of Operation Sindoor.

Gen Seth took over as the 31st Chief of the Army Staff on 30 June, succeeding the outgoing chief. He is regarded across the force as an officer with deep operational grounding, and he carries the rare distinction of having commanded two operational Army commands along India's western front.

That western-front record matters in an army whose heaviest commitments still run along the borders with Pakistan. An officer who has held two of those commands reaches the top job already tested on the ground that counts most.

Gen Dhiraj Seth outlines the VIJAY vision

Before the call on the President, Gen Seth had already set out how he intends to run the force. In a meeting earlier this month with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the Army chief laid out his priorities and folded them into a single word.

He called it VIJAY.

Each letter stands for a priority. V is for vigilance, which he tied to constant watch along the borders and a high level of operational readiness against any threat to national security. I is for innovation, which he wants running through the Army's thinking, its systems and the way it builds new capability. J is for jointness and integration. A is for Atmanirbharta. Y is for Yodha First, which he framed around the training and welfare of soldiers.

The soldier at the centre

The last letter is the one he kept returning to. By placing Yodha First at the close of the acronym, Gen Seth put the soldier, and how the force trains and cares for its people, at the centre of his agenda.

Nation First and a decade of transformation

When he assumed charge, Gen Seth said he would lead the Indian Army with an unwavering commitment to the ideals of duty, honour and Nation First. He described it as a combat-ready and battle-hardened force, fully prepared and capable of meeting every challenge in the operational domain.

He did not treat that as reason to stand still.

"To respond effectively to the evolving security environment, we must take forward the modernisation of the Army with renewed energy and firm resolve," he said at the time. He spoke of building a technology-enabled, future-ready Army, one that is fully empowered and able to operate across multiple domains.

He placed all of this inside what he called a Decade of Transformation, a framing that treats the years ahead as the stretch in which the Army retools itself for a changing character of warfare rather than one budget or one platform.

Command across the western front

Over a long career Gen Seth has held several key command and staff appointments, moving across operational and staff roles as he rose. His two western-front commands sit at the centre of that record. His rise to the top job followed a handover that his own family marked closely, a moment IDW covered in the days around the change of command.

His call on President Murmu came in a week already crowded with change at the top of India's military. A run of senior appointments across the services has reshaped the higher command in recent days. Lt Gen Mohit Malhotra took over the Jaipur-based South Western Command, Air Mshl Tejinder Singh moved in as Chief of Integrated Staff Committee, and Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit stepped up as Vice Chief of the Air Staff. The new Army chief's meeting with the President was part of that wider churn.

The photograph released by the President's office showed Gen Seth and Komal Seth with Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan.