Protests against Agnipath politically motivated: VK Singh

Singh said there are attempts to pull down any reform measure that is being introduced and those who are behind are the ones who could not bring in any reforms when they were in power.

Ernakulam (Kerala): Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways, VK Singh, while inaugurating a Yoga programme on Tuesday, said that the protests against the Agnipath scheme are "politically motivated" and are an effort to "prevent reforms" in the Indian Army.

"Whenever you want to bring out reform, people start to pull you down because they could not take out reforms whenever they were in power. We have been toying with the idea of how to reform the Army forces because our teeth-to-tail ratio is higher, the tail ratio is much higher than the other countries and we have been working on it since the Kargil review committee sat down. I will take you back in time. In 1961, when we started the emergency commission scheme because we needed more officers, they had three to six months of training and I have not heard any comment that these people who came at critical junctures, fought the 62' and 65' wars, faulted anywhere. They did a commendable job. If I give you some statistics of Kargil, almost every unit has a large percentage of people who had around four years of service, they were all young," Singh stated.

Singh added, "if you take 71' war, our Paramveer charka was won by the person who stood in front to stop the Pakistani tanks to move to India, Arun Khetarpal had just about a year service." He said there are attempts to pull down any reform measure that is being introduced and those who are behind are the ones who could not bring in any reforms when they were in power. He supported the scheme and said the protests against it were "pointless".