State remains major contributor to armed forces: Lt Gen Nair

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 1

Punjab still remains one of the top contributors to the armed forces for Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and other ranks. The number has almost doubled in the past three years.

This was stated by Lieutenant General RN Nair, Director General (Recruiting), during the raising ceremony of the Army’s interim Selection Centre North (SCN) for officers at Kapurthala on Wednesday.

He also announced that the shortage of officers in the Army has come down from 12,000 to around 7,000 this year.

General Nair said that according to the 2011 Census, the Recruitable Male Population (RMP) of Punjab is around 2.34 per cent which is the highest in the country.

The state has the highest quota of 1,400 seats out of the total 60,000 vacancies for JCOs and other ranks in the country.

“Punjab was subscribing to up to 3,000 vacancies until three years ago. The number has almost doubled to around 5,000 recruitments in 2014-15, one of the highest in the country,” said General Nair.

He also said that for the recruitment of jawans, the open rally system has now been linked with an online registration system.

“We sometimes received around 20,000 candidates in an open rally, making it difficult for us to scrutinise all of them in a single day. Now, the candidates have to first register themselves online for a rally on our department’s website and only after receiving confirmation, come for the rally,” he said.

Also to boost the officers intake from the state; the Army had decided to open an SCN with two selection boards for officers at Ropar.

The provisional SCN raised at Kapurthala military station will operate until March 2016 and thereafter, it will be shifted to a state-of-the-art 200-acre campus (presently under construction) at Ropar.

The proposal was conceptualised and initiated by Lt-General NPS Hira, presently the General Officer Commanding at Vajra Corps, a few years back.

The upcoming centre at Ropar will be the country’s fifth selection centre and will facilitate the intake of more officers into the armed forces.

According to sources, the Army has a shortage of around 7,000 officers, Navy and Air Force have a shortage of around 1,200 and 2,000 officers respectively.

The move has also come in support of the state government’s war against drugs as even today, it has been accused of failing to control the drug menace that has made its youth incapable of meeting the “good physical standards” of the Indian Army.

Besides allocating around 203 acres for setting up the SCN at Ropar, the state government has also allocated around Rs 5 crore for the development of the area in its vicinity.

Earlier, there were only four selection centres for officers — Allahabad, Bhopal and Bangalore for army and at Dehradun for the Air Force.

There was a long pending demand for a selection centre in Punjab. Young aspirants from Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, and Jammu and Kashmir had to appear before the Special Selection Board (SSB) at these places to get selected as officers in the armed forces.

Now, with an SCN coming up in the state, it is expected to fill the shortage of officers in the third largest army in the world.