Agnipath: Recruitment plan out, protesters barred

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 19

Amid protests against the Agnipath recruitment scheme, senior military officers on Sunday announced a schedule for recruitment in the three Services while making it clear that none of the protesters would be inducted.

Undertaking by applicants must

Those who want to be a part of the armed forces under Agnipath will have to give a certificate that they were not part of any arson. Lt Gen Anil Puri, additional secretary, dept of military affairs

Indian Army

• Draft notification today, subsequent notifications from July 1
• Recruitment rallies from Aug till Nov
• Training of first batch in December
• 83 recruitment rallies across country to pick 40,000 Agniveers

Indian Air Force

• Registration to begin from June 24
• Training for first batch by Dec 30

Indian Navy

• Recruitment guidelines by June 25
• First batch to join training on INS Chilka, Odisha, by November 21

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35 WhatsApp groups banned for ‘fake news’ on Agnipath

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483 trains cancelled on Sunday

After the stormy anti-Agnipath protests during the past four days in many parts of the country, there was a comparative lull today with peaceful agitations in several places.

With the government standing its ground on the new scheme for short-term recruitment, Additional Secretary, Department of Military Affairs, Lt Gen Anil Puri said at a press conference here that there was no space for indiscipline in the armed forces. “Everyone who aspires to join Agnipath will give an undertaking that they have not taken part in any arson or protest. This will be part of the pro forma,” the General said. There will be a police verification of each candidate to weed out persons whose names figure in police FIRs and police record of protesters in the past one week or so. Police verification is a normal practice in all military recruitment.

“There will be no rollback of the scheme,” General Puri said in reply to a question while adding that Agnipath, which aims to make the Army younger, has been a long-pending reform recommended by the Kargil Review Committee and Arun Singh Committee. The recruitment of soldiers under the scheme will increase to over 1.25 lakh annually in the next 4-5 years, he added. Senior officers of the three Services were present at the press conference conducted hours after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met with the Chiefs of the three armed forces at his residence this morning. Lt Gen CB Ponnappa, Adjutant General, said the terms, conditions and eligibility criteria had been put up on the Army website. By tomorrow, the draft notification would be put up and by July 1, a formal notification would be sent to all recruitment offices.

The recruitment rallies will start in August and carry on till November. The recruitment process will be in two batches. Around 25,000 are to be recruited in the first batch and the training will begin by the first half of December. The second batch of 15,000 will be recruited in the first half of February 2023.

In all, 83 recruitment rallies for the Army are planned across the country, covering all states. There will be a fitness test and a written exam.

Vice Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi, Chief of Personnel, said the advertisement would be out by June 25. By November 21, the first batch of Agniveers would report at the INS Chilka training centre. The Navy has an existing online exam and would go through the same route, Vice Admiral Tripathi said.

Speaking for the IAF, Air Marshal SK Jha, Air Officer-in-Charge Personnel, said the notification and the online registration process for enrolment of the first batch would begin from June 24. The first batch was expected to start training by December 30.

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