Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. File
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday reacted to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement that the Narendra Modi authorities was open to making modifications in the Agniveer scheme for the armed forces, if required.
Agniveers are the new recruits below the Agnipath Scheme the place 25% of the inductees would get everlasting fee whereas others would retire after 4 years of service.
Calling the Agnipath Scheme “flawed and discriminatory”, a number of Opposition events, together with the Congress, have requested the authorities to scrap it and revert to the outdated system of recruitment.
In an interview to a information channel on Thursday, Mr. Singh didn’t discuss of reverting to the outdated scheme however hinted that the authorities was open to making additional modifications.
“This shows that the Agniveer Scheme imposed on lakhs of patriotic youth by the Modi government is no longer working. First the Modi government destroyed the future of lakhs of our youth, now due to elections, it has talked about accepting the flaws in the Agniveer Scheme,” Mr. Kharge stated in a publish on X (previously Twitter).
‘Will scrap the scheme’
The Congress chief stated the authorities should first apologise to the youth and reiterated that if his occasion got here to energy, it might scrap the scheme. He added the scheme had “weakened” nationwide safety as “no youth wants to join the Army for only four years”.
Mr. Kharge stated his occasion, by means of its “Jai Jawan” marketing campaign, highlighted the plight of about 1.5 lakh younger males and who had been chosen for the armed forces in an everyday recruitment drive between 2019 and 2022 after passing a rigorous choice course of. However, their induction couldn’t happen as the Modi authorities immediately introduced the Agnipath Scheme for the armed forces.
“Former Army Chief [retired] General M.M. Naravane ji recently said that 75% people were to be taken and 25% people were to be released in the ‘Agniveer Yojana’. But the Modi government did the opposite, and forcibly imposed this scheme on the three armed forces,” Mr. Kharge stated.
