Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will on July 11 brief the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Defence on the Agnipath recruitment scheme, which seeks to overhaul the way soldiers are recruited to the armed forces.
“Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh is scheduled to brief the Committee members about various aspects of the recently-launched Agnipath scheme, through which recruitment of soldiers in all the three services will henceforth take place,” the ministry said in a statement on July 7. The meeting was earlier planned for July 8.
Chiefs of the Indian Army, Indian Air Force and Indian Navy, and the defence secretary, as well as other senior defence ministry officials, will attend the meeting.
It comes at a time when the forces have called for applications for recruiting Agniveers, as the soldiers recruited under the scheme will be called.
Singh will brief the committee about the various aspects of the scheme. The Singh-led committee has 20 members, including 13 members of the Lok Sabha and seven from the Rajya Sabha, representing members of nearly all parties, the parliamentary affairs ministry website says.
Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, National Conference supremo Farooq Abdullah and Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay are among the members.
Violent protests rocked several parts of the country for almost a week after the Agnipath scheme was unveiled on June 14. Various opposition parties demanded its rollback over the temporary nature of the jobs and a lack of pension provisions.
Earlier this week, the Indian Air Force (IAF) said it received 7.5 lakh applications under the Agnipath recruitment scheme. The registration process began on June 24. This year, 46,000 soldiers would be taken in.
(With PTI inputs)
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