§ MR. PIRIE (Aberdeen, N)To ask the Secretary of State for India whether, in view of the practice, by which the General Officers Commanding the Madras, Bombay, and Punjaub Frontier Army Corps have hitherto selected officers for the staff and other appointments in their commands, having been abolished, and this function having been placed entirely in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief in India, who, together with his military secretary, have had no previous experience of that country or personal knowledge of officers serving there in the British and Native Armies, he will, with the view of conforming with the principles of decentralisation and of giving individual responsibility and authority to the largest possible number of superior officers, further consider the matter.
(Answered by Secretary Lord George Hamilton.) I am not aware what is the practice to which the hon. Member refers. When the Presidential Army system was abolished as long ago as 1894 the power of appointing officers to the higher staff appointments was necessarily transferred to the Commander in-Chief, India, because these appointments are held by officers of high rank selected from the whole of India. But all the lower staff appointments, from Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General and Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General at 314 command headquarters downwards, are still made by the Lieutenant-Generals of the various commands. A classified list of staff appointments, together with the name of the sanctioning authority in each case, will be found in Army Regulations, India, Vol. II., Part A, Paragraph 239, and, as at present advised, I see no reason for modifying it.