General Vijay Kumar Singh (born 10 May 1950), known as V. K. Singh, is a retired four-star general of the Indian Army and a politician who has been Governor of Mizoram since January 2025. He was the 23rd Chief of the Army Staff from 2010 to 2012, the first trained commando to hold the post. After retiring he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, was twice elected to the Lok Sabha from Ghaziabad and served as a Union minister of state for ten years.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Vijay Kumar Singh |
| Born | 10 May 1950, Pune, Maharashtra, India |
| Age | 76 |
| Service | Indian Army (1970–2012) |
| Rank | General |
| Offices held | Chief of the Army Staff (2010–2012); Union Minister of State (2014–2024); Governor of Mizoram (since January 2025) |
| Education | Birla Public School, Pilani; National Defence Academy |
| Decorations | PVSM, AVSM, YSM |
| Spouse | Bharti Singh |
Early Life
Singh comes from Bapora, a village in Bhiwani district of Haryana with a long tradition of sending its sons to the army; his father was a colonel and his grandfather a junior commissioned officer. He was born in Pune, where his father was posted, and studied at Birla Public School in Pilani before joining the National Defence Academy.
Military Career
He was commissioned into the 2nd Battalion of the Rajput Regiment in June 1970 and fought in the war of 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh. He served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, where he was awarded the Yudh Seva Medal. He qualified at the United States Army’s Ranger School at Fort Benning and later attended the US Army War College. He commanded a counter-insurgency force in Jammu and Kashmir, the strike corps at Ambala and the Eastern Command in Kolkata.
He became Chief of the Army Staff on 31 March 2010. His term is remembered for a dispute over his date of birth, recorded in different army files as 1950 and 1951. The government held to the earlier year, which fixed his retirement in May 2012, and in January 2012 he took the matter to the Supreme Court, the first serving chief to sue the government; he withdrew the petition after the court declined to intervene. He also said publicly that he had been offered a bribe to approve the purchase of army trucks.
Political Career
He took part in the anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare after retirement and joined the BJP in March 2014. In that year’s general election he won Ghaziabad by more than 5.6 lakh votes, one of the largest margins in the country, and he held the seat in 2019.
As Minister of State for External Affairs from 2014 to 2019 he was sent to oversee evacuations from conflict zones. In Operation Raahat in April 2015 he worked from Djibouti and flew into Sana’a as about 4,600 Indians and nearly a thousand citizens of other countries were brought out of Yemen. He led a similar effort in South Sudan in 2016. From 2019 he was Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways and, from 2021, for Civil Aviation as well; during the evacuation of students from Ukraine in 2022 he was posted to the Polish border. He drew criticism for several remarks about journalists and opponents.
He was not a candidate in 2024. In December 2024 he was appointed Governor of Mizoram and took the oath in Aizawl on 16 January 2025.
Personal Life
He is married to Bharti Singh and they have two daughters. His autobiography, Courage and Conviction, was published in 2013.
Frequently Asked Questions
When and where was V. K. Singh born?
V. K. Singh was born on 10 May 1950 in Pune, Maharashtra, India and is 76 years old.
Featured image: General V. K. Singh addresses the ASEAN–India Connectivity Summit, New Delhi, December 2017. Photo by Ministry of External Affairs, licensed under Government Open Data License – India, via Wikimedia Commons.
