Army wanted 75% Agniveers to be retained: Gen MM Naravane

PTI

New Delhi, December 19

In a meeting with the PM weeks after becoming the Army Chief, Gen MM Naravane sounded out in early 2020 about the ‘Tour of Duty’ scheme for inducting soldiers for short-term tenure but months later the PMO came out with a formulation with a much wider scope to include all the three services.

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Citing Gen Naravane’s memoir, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said the ex-Army Chief had confirmed what had been commonly believed when the Agnipath scheme was bulldozed through without meaningful consultations with those who were being directly impacted.

This is what former Army Chief Gen Naravane says in his memoir ‘Four Stars of Destiny’ while elaborating on the birth of the ‘Agnipath’ recruitment scheme — considered India’s most radical military recruitment policy.

Naravane notes that various models of the scheme were deliberated upon and the Army’s initial view was that 75% of the personnel to be recruited could be retained while 25% should be released.

In June 2022, the government rolled out the Agnipath recruitment scheme for short-term induction of personnel with an aim to bring down the age profile of the three services. It provides for recruiting youths between the age bracket of 17-and-half years and 21 for four years with a provision to retain 25% of them for 15 more years.

In the book, published by Penguin Random House India, Naravane also recalled that the first year’s starting salary for the inductees was kept at just Rs 20,000 per month (all-inclusive) and that was “not acceptable”.

“Surely a soldier could not be compared with a daily wage labourer? Based on our very strong recommendations, this was later raised to Rs 30,000 per month,” he says.

After the new formulation of the scheme, Gen Naravane says, the Army was “taken by surprise by this turn of events, but for the Navy and Air Force, it came like a bolt from the blue.”

Naravane says it took him some time to explain to the other Chiefs that his proposal had only been Army-centric and that he was equally surprised by these developments. ‘Four Stars of Destiny’ will hit the stands next month.

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