Ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday briefed the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Defence on the Agnipath scheme at the end of which the Opposition MPs submitted a memorandum demanding its immediate withdrawal.
The memorandum was signed by Congress MPs Mallikarjun Kharge and Shaktisingh Gohil, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party, Saugata Roy and Sudip Bandhopadyay of the Trinamool Congress, and A.D. Singh of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. But the Congress’s Manish Tewari, who has publicly lauded the scheme, did not sign the document. According to sources, he relayed to the others that the consultative committee should not be a used as a political platform.
Soon after the opening remarks by Mr. Singh and the presentation made by the Department of Military Affairs, sources said that Congress member Shaktisinh Gohil made an elaborate comment, decrying the scheme. He said that the scheme should first be launched as a pilot project.
He said that this was a political decision and not a call made by the Indian armed forces. “Who put out the first tweet? Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which clearly shows that even the Defence Minister had little involvement in the decision making process,” he said as per those who attended the meeting.
Trinamool’s Mr. Roy also backed this by saying that the government should not have tried to take the ownership of the scheme. They should have allowed the Army to take the lead.
Mr. Gohil further attacked the government, saying that, the Army officers addressed a press conferences only when countrywide protests erupted. Mr. Gohil also pointed out that in 2020 the Indian Army had advertised vacancies, based on which in February 2021 many applicants had appeared for the medical and physical examination. Even as the successful candidates were waiting for a call, the agnipath scheme was hastily announced.
Though, Mr. Tewari did not sign the Opposition memorandum, according to sources, during the 90-minute long meeting, he asked the Defence Minister to explain if the scheme was aimed at right sizing the Army from its current strength of 1.4 million to a million and if that was the case, he said, the government should say that upfront.
Neither the Defence Minister or the other officers had a clear and emphatic reply to this. They reiterated that the scheme was aimed at bringing down the age profile. There were also questions on operational readiness especially with the Agnipath recruitment scheme.
During the monsoon session of Parliament that begins next week, the Opposition parties are expected to corner the government on this scheme.
After the unveiling of the scheme on June 14, violent protests against it were reported from several States for nearly a week and various opposition parties had demanded its rollback.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) recently said it had received nearly 7.5 lakh applications under the scheme. The registration process began on June 24.
