Agnipath unfair to youth: Uttam
Says BJP is compromising security when India’s border on two sides are live
TPCC president A. Revanth Reddy and his predecessor N. Uttam Kumar Reddy took part in the satyagraha at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on Sunday to express solidarity with the students and youth who have been protesting against the Agnipath scheme of recruitment for the armed forces.
Senior leaders including AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, K.C. Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary, Sachin Pilot, Deepender Hooda and others participated in the Satyagraha.
Speaking at the satyagraha, Uttam Kumar Reddy, the Nalgonda MP, said that by introducing the Agnipath scheme, the BJP government had tried to compromise on national security. The scheme was unfair and unjust to the lakhs of youth who were looking forward to a career of honour and dignity in the Army, Navy and the Air Force. “They are now feeling cheated,” he said.
Sharing some statistics, Uttam Kumar Reddy, a former fighter pilot with the Indian Air Force, said that the armed forces recruit about 60,000 people annually. There had been no recruitment in the Army, Navy or the Air Force for the last two to two-and-a-half years.
Therefore, as against the sanctioned strength of about 13 lakh, there are nearly 1.3 vacancies. While the recruitment was halted for two years citing the Covid pandemic as the reason, no regular recruitment was done even this year. He said that the Central government had announced the Agnipath scheme all of a sudden which envisaged only six months of training and three-and-a-half years in service.
“I spoke to many veterans and serving officers. All of them were unanimous that this scheme may save the government a few crores in the pension bill, but it does bode well for the country’s security. The country is today facing a war-like situation on both fronts. For the first time after independence, both the borders are live. The Chinese are intruding into our borders and the Pakistani forces are active on the border. At this stage, the defence ministry tinkering with the armed forces is very unfortunate and condemnable,” he said.
The Congress MP said that not just the Agnipath scheme, but the defence ministry had initiated the optimisation exercise by which it wanted to reduce manpower by 15 per cent. “Most of the veterans feel that this is not good for the armed forces and not in the interest of national security,” he said.
Uttam Kumar Reddy said that the Congress had organised the satyagraha to express solidarity with the youth across the country who were protesting against the Agnipath scheme. “The BJP is spreading the wrong propaganda that somebody is inciting the youth to violence. The protests are spontaneous. Nobody incited the youth and the protests spontaneously erupted across the country,” he said.
Further, Uttam Kumar Reddy dismissed the BJP's contention that the idea for the Agnipath scheme was borrowed from other countries. He said nowhere in the world were people recruited to the armed forces on a contractual basis.
Congress MP said that the youth wanted to serve country on a long-term and regular basis. This contractual method of induction into armed forces is unjust for youth and puts country’s security in danger, he said.
“The spontaneous protest across the country shows the alarming level of unemployment in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised 2 crore jobs every year and by now his government should’ve provided 8 crore jobs. The ongoing protests are the result of neglect of the alarming unemployment situation in India,” he said.