CHANDIGARH: Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring today demanded that it was high time that the government of India should scrap the ‘agnipath’ scheme of recruitment in the defence forces and make regular recruitments only.
In a statement issued here today, Warring hoped that better sense prevails among the powers that be and they realize that the ‘agnipath’ scheme is completely discriminatory as has been seen in some recent cases.
He referred to the death of an ‘agniveer’ from Punjab, in Jammu by a bullet injury whose family has not been provided any compensation. He said, it has been observed after some ‘agniveers’ got martyred that they were neither granted pension nor the status of a martyr, when they fight like regular soldiers.
Warring observed that the situation has drastically changed now from the time the ‘agnipath’ scheme was conceived and introduced. He said, that time the government of India probably did not anticipate the situation that arose recently in the wake of the terror attack in Pahalgam.
He said, under the current situation it is highly advisable that there should only be regular recruitments in the defence services and all the ‘agniveers’ recruited so far, must be regularized as regular soldiers.
Warring noted that the northern states like Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh from where maximum recruitments are made, were the worst affected by this scheme.
He said the Congress had made it one of the important agendas in its 2024 Election Manifesto that the ‘agnipath’ scheme will be scrapped.
“Hope the BJP government at the centre will realize the gravity and the urgency of the situation and scrap the ‘agnipath’ scheme and make regular appointments only, without making it a prestige issue”, he said, while remarking, that this is the need of the hour.