New Delhi, December 22, 2005, Rajat Pandit (TOI)

There seems to be a disconnect, inadvertent or deliberate, between defence minister Pranab Mukherjee on one side and his ministry's bureaucrats and the armed forces on the other.

At least two of the written replies given by Mukherjee in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday are patently incorrect.

This when Mukherjee's replies to questions raised by MPs — as with all other ministers — are carefully prepared by the department concerned and cleared only after vetting by senior officials. The minister also gets briefed about them by top bureaucrats before taking the floor in Parliament.

Take the first question, asked by BJP member S S Ahluwalia, on Mukherjee's trip to the North-East in September.

In a sub-query, Ahluwalia asked whether the Army's Tezpur-based 4 Corps HQ had issued a statement that the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) continued to indulge in heinous activities without eschewing violence.

No such statement was made by 4 Corps HQ, replied Mukherjee. The fact, however, is that journ-alists accompanying Mukherjee during the visit, including this reporter, were officially handed over the written statement by the Army in Assam on September 22.

It was reported by this newspaper, as others, in its issue dated September 23. "ULFA continues to carry out extortion, recruitment, killing and kidnappings of innocent people and has shown no signs of giving up its terrorist activities or eschewing the path of violence," it said.

The statement's timing, of course, proved awkward for the defence ministry. Assamese writer Indira Goswami was at that very time trying to get the Prime Minister's Office to hold talks with ULFA-nominated People's Consultative Group.

And these talks indeed took place a month later. Now the second question. Congress MPs Motilal Vora and Prema Cariappa asked Mukherjee whether government had received any study by Major-General (retired) Surjeet Singh, former chairman of Army HQ's Pay Commission Cell.

"No, sir," was Mukherjee's reply. But the fact is that Maj-Gen Singh send the study, which holds that the average age at which ex-servicemen die (59 to 72) is much lower than civil servants, to Army chief Gen J J Singh on June 9.

The Army's Adjutant General Branch, in fact, acknowledged and appreciated Maj-Gen Singh's letter on August 23.

"The paper forwarded by you will be examined in detail by PPOC (principle personnel officers' committee) and neces-sary measures will be taken to alleviate hardship of ex-servicemen to the extent possible," it says.

Maj-Gen Singh, in turn, laments, "It's very upsetting that the ministry denied my study's very existence in Parliament. Either they find it inconvenient or want to buy time. I know the PPOC discussed my paper on September 5."

The moot question remains that while the defence ministry and Army might dispute the study's claims or methodology. they cannot say they are not aware of it.