New Delhi: There is noquestion of rightsizing or downsizing of theIndian Army through Agnipath scheme,senior military official Lt Gen Anil Puri saidon Tuesday while stressing that the objectivebehind the scheme is to bring youthfulness inthe armed forces.
“The whole objective behind introducing thescheme is to bring youthfulness to the forces.There is no question of rightsizing or downsizing the armed forces. That’s not the aim… just notthe aim,” he said.
The Additional Secretary in the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) was speaking on Agnipathscheme at a press conference along with HR heads of the three Services.
Gen Puri said that before deciding on Agnipath scheme, the government and the armed forceshad a lot of brainstorming with all the stakeholders.
Giving out statistics, the senior military official said 150 meetings of the three services took placeto discuss Agnipath scheme. Similarly, there were 60 meetings of the Defence Ministry and 44’Whole of Govt’ meetings over the recruitment scheme.
“It is not possible that various kinds of meetings do not take place before bringing such a hugereform. The work was being done for the past two years involving the erstwhile chiefs of threearmed forces. Before that the Agnipath scheme was being studied only on papers,” he said.
He said that the armed forces conducted discussions with various ministries including Home,Finance, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Education and Law in the run up tolaunching the scheme.
Gen Puri said that the armed forces though studied the recruitment models of other countriestoo.
“No other country except India has or will have a demographic dividend like India in the nearfuture. And as such, Indian problems will need Indian solutions. In the coming years, India willbe the only nation to have 50 per cent of the population under the age of 25 years,” he said.
He assured that there has been no change in the recruitment process.
“I can assure you that there is no difference between the recruitment process which took placefive years ago and the process which is going to take place five days later for Agniveers.
“We are in the profession of soldiering. Any solution that we go ahead with would be for thesecurity of the nation. Our solutions will always be soldier-centric, youth-centric and focussed onsecurity of the country,” he said. (UNI)
