New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party has slammed the Congress for holding a sit-in protest against the central government’s new army recruitment scheme Agnipath. BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra addressed the media hours after Congress' 'Satyagrah' concluded at Jantar Mantar here. Patra reiterated the benefits that youth will get from the short-term army recruitment scheme while highlighting that Agnipath was a "reform much needed" to reduce the average age of the Indian Army from 32 to 26 years.
“Agnipath is a scheme in which there should be no politics but the opposition is doing this by holding ‘Satyagrah’ at Jantar Mantar. This scheme aims at transforming the profile of the Indian army with a youthful face. Lt. Gen. Puri said today that this is not the concern of today but it goes way back to 1989 when it was discussed and papers were presented on how the recruitment age of the Army should be reduced so that the average age of a soldier is brought down. Today the average age of an Indian Army soldier is 32 years. Agnipath will bring this down to 26 which is a matter of pride for the Army,” said Patra.
He said that even after the Kargil War victory where the country lost many of its soldiers, a review committee comprising defense experts and officers had said that some sort of reform was needed. "One of the biggest recommendations of that committee was that the average age of the Army should be brought down and the army should come up with a more youthful face. This is not a new subject, this should have been done much before as per recommendations," he said. “Congress party leader Priyanka Gandhi should rather have done ‘Aagrah’ to bring this reform than doing ‘Satyagrah’ against it,” he added. The BJP has also alleged that during the ten years of the UPA government, no aircraft were procured and the army was "working with a depleted strength".
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Congress party on the other hand has raised concerns over the future of Agniveer, 75 percent of whom will be out of service in just four years and only 25% will be retained for regular service. "For that 75% who will come out after completing their service, many provisions have already been announced by the central government. They will get a quota in several government departments, CAPF, state police and corporates as well. Not only central but state governments have also announced several privileges for Agniveers and all of them are moving forward to see to it that 75% of people who come out of this scheme after completing four years are accommodated,” said the BJP spokesperson.
Congress leaders while addressing the sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar raised several concerns over the newly introduced scheme, one of which was that the new scheme could lead to a rise in a private militia. Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh raised a question about what the youth who will be trained in ‘Shoot to Kill’ do after four years? One of the ministers in the Rajasthan government said that the unemployed Agniveers "will become Naxals". Irfan Ansari, Congress leader MLA from Jharkhand said that there will be a "bloodbath on roads" after the scheme.
Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi while addressing the protest at Jantar Mantar appealed to the government to roll back the scheme. Hitting back at the Congress leaders for their statements, Patra said that the opposition leaders should trust the youth of the country. “How can youth trained to protect the motherland turn into naxals? How can you have such thoughts about the youth of your country? What kind of a threat is it that there will be a bloodbath on the roads? I was listening to Priyanka Gandhi while she was addressing the so-called Satyagrah. Her only motive was to bring down this government,” he said.
