Vice Admiral Ajit Kumar is Western Naval Command Chief

Mumbai: Vice Admiral P Ajit Kumar took over as the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command (WNC), in Mumbai on Thursday.

At an impressive ceremony at the Naval Air Station Shikra here, Vice Admiral Ajit inspected the guard of honour. He took over the reins of WNC from Vice Admiral Girish Luthra, who superannuated on Thursday after serving the Navy for 40 years.

Vice Admiral Ajit was the Vice Chief of Naval Staff at the Naval headquarters in Delhi before moving to Mumbai.

A recipient of PVSM, AVSM and VSM, he has returned to WNC where he had earlier commanded two frontline destroyers (INS Mumbai and INS Mysore), a stealth frigate (INS Talwar) in addition to being the Chief Staff Officer (Operations), to name a few.

Widely regarded as the man who turned the around Indian Naval Academy (INA), Ezhimala, Vice Admiral Ajit is a missile expert and a product of Sainik School at Kazhakootam, near Thiruvananthapuram.

At INA, he strove hard to bring its standard on par with the IITs and was responsible in embedding many new thought processes to the training.

He guided INA through the very critical Phase-I expansion period, with impetus to technology.

Vice Admiral Ajit hails from Eranakulam and joined the Indian Navy on July 1, 1981.