"Hero of Kashmir". Minister of Defence Krishna Menon became a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1953 from Madras. In 1956, he joined the Union Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and was made Minister of Defence in April 1957, after winning the North Mumbai seat to the Lok Sabha. Menon was a substantially more powerful and high-profile figure than his predecessors, and brought with him a degree of governmental, public, and international attention that India's military had not previously known. He suspended the seniority system within the army, replacing it with a merit-based method of promotion, and extensively restructured much of India's military command system, eventually leading to the resignation of the Chief of the Army Staff, General K.S. Thimayya. Critics accused Menon of disregarding tradition in favour of personal caprice; Menon countered that he was seeking to improve the efficiency of the military. Menon, in the face of intense opposition, also began the creation of a domestic military industrial complex to supply the Indian armed forces with weaponry and provisions. Annexation of Portuguese India The annexation of Goa was closely linked with the 1961 elections to the Lok Sabha. With the race looming, Menon aggressively addressed the issue of Indian sovereignty over the Portuguese colony of Goa, in a partial reprise of his earlier defence of Indian Kashmir. In New York, Menon met US Ambassador and two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson behind closed doors, before meeting with President John F. Kennedy, who had expressed his reservations about Menon's anti-imperialism during the state visit of Jawaharlal Nehru. Menon lectured Kennedy on the importance of US-Soviet compromise, before returning to India. On 17 December 1961, Menon and the Indian Army overran Goa, leading to widespread Western condemnation. In his typical style, Menon dismissed the admonishments of Kennedy and Stevenson as "vestige(s) of Western imperialism". Menon's spearheading of the Indian annexation of Goa had subtle ramifications throughout Asia, as in the case of Indonesian president Sukarno, who refrained from invading the Portuguese colony of East Timor partially from fear of being compared to Menon. The invasion also spawned a complex mass of legal issues relating to differences between eastern and western interpretations of United Nations law and jurisdiction. The Sino-Indian War In 1962 China attacked India, leading to the brief Sino-Indian War, and a temporary reversal in India's non-aligned foreign policy. Menon was heavily criticised both inside and outside parliament for ineffectiveness