Downplaying the violent protests towards the Agnipath recruitment scheme that proceed to rock Uttar Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Sunday fielded the navy’s high manpower planners in a press convention to ship out the message: “Agnipath is here to stay.”
Lieutenant General Anil Puri, extra secretary in the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), who was on the forefront of conceiving and structuring the Agnipath Yojana and is now the navy’s frontman in defending the scheme, advised the press convention in Delhi: “”The Agnipath scheme is not going to be rolled again. Why ought to or not it’s rolled again?”
Conveying the impression of a powerful authorities, Puri stated the concessions that the MoD had made in the Agnipath scheme weren’t pressured by protests and arson, however as a result of they had been already in the works.
The generals spelt out a recruitment schedule that made it clear it was too late to backtrack on this pathbreaking scheme.
Lieutenant General C Bansi Ponnappa, the Army’s Adjutant General and high manpower planner, stated recruitment to the Army would begin in the primary half of August and the primary Agniveers will come in by the primary week of December, adopted by a second lot in February.
Ponappa stated the Army would maintain 83 recruitment rallies and contact “each village” in the nation. With the 2011 census inserting the nation’s village depend at 6,40,930, this requires every rally to perform recruitment from a median of seven,722 villages. This is clearly an exaggeration.
The Air Force too stated it might enrol the primary batch of Agniveers by December and coaching would start earlier than the New Year.
The Navy, nevertheless, would be the first service to get off the blocks. The first batch of Agniveers would attain the Chilka Lake in Odisha for coaching by November 21.
The unanticipated protests have pressured the federal government to announce a number of advert hoc concessions. These embody a ten per cent quota in MoD jobs, which embody the Coast Guard, defence civilian posts, and all 16 defence public sector undertakings. This reservation could be over and above the present job reservations for ex-servicemen.
In addition, the federal government rapidly introduced a ten per cent quota for retired Agniveers in the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs), which embody the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Seema Suraksha Bal and the Assam Rifles, the final of which comes underneath the MoD.
From the outset, Puri has been instructed to convey the message that saving cash, by lowering the variety of pensioners, or by reducing the wage payroll of serving troopers, was not a key goal of Agnipath. Instead, the primary goal was to decrease the age profile of the navy from the present common of 32 years to a extra sustainable common of 27 years.
Puri additionally used the lure of Agniveer jobs to quell public unrest and cease arson on the streets. He stated any candidate who faces a police case can’t apply for Agnipath.
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