Agnipath won’t take in violent protesters: MoD
NEW DELHI: Agnipath aspirants will be rejected if they have been accused of arson or vandalism, a senior military official said on Sunday, signalling a hardening of stance on the violent protests against the recruitment programme that have disrupted train services across the country and led to the destruction of hundreds of vehicles and coaches.
The official also ruled out a rollback of recruitment scheme despite widespread protests.
The comments came a day ahead of a planned protest over the scheme in Delhi, and close on the heels of a spree of assurances by various ministries that those who are not absorbed in the military after their four-year Agnipath stint will have ample job opportunities elsewhere.
“Every individual who wants to join the armed forces through the Agnipath scheme will have to submit a pledge that they were neither part of any protest nor were involved in any violence. Nobody can join the forces without police verification... We have made the provisions,” said Lt General Anil Puri, the additional secretary of the department of military affairs.
The official, alleging the protests were instigated by “inimical forces” as well as some coaching institutes, said discipline was paramount for the armed forces.
“The foundation of the Indian armed forces is discipline.
There is no space for arson. There is no problem if you show your anger and engage in talks. But there is no space for arson and vandalism.”
The official defended the scheme and said the announcements in recent days of reserving jobs for those who leave the military at the end of the fouryear Agnipath scheme was planned for long.
“The announcements regarding the reservations were preplanned and not in reaction to the arson that happened after Agnipath scheme announcement,” Lt Gen Puri added, speaking a briefing with officials from all three services.
To a question on whether the government was reviewing or rolling back the scheme because of the protests, Lt Gen Puri said: “No, why should there be a rollback?”
The three services of the military came out with a broad schedule of enrolment under the new policy and asserted that it was aimed at bringing down the age profile of the armed forces. “By December first week, we will get the first batch of 25,000 Agniveers and the second batch would be inducted around February 2023, taking the number to 40,000,” said Lt Gen Bansi Ponappa.
Air Marshal SK Jha, the officer-in-charge of personnel at the Indian Air Force, said registrations for the first batch will start from June 24 and from July 24, the first phase of the online examination process will begin. “The first batch would be enrolled by December and training would commence by December 30,” he said.
Lt Gen Puri defended the scheme, calling it a “long-pending reform”.
NEW DELHI: As the wave of violent protests against the new Agnipath military recruitment scheme receded, state police across the country began to take action over the violence in earnest and arrested over a thousand people, mostly in Bihar, officials familiar with the matter said.
In Bihar, which has reported the worst of the violence, including trains being set on fire across districts and public property damaged, police have lodged 148 first information reports (FIRs) and arrested 805 people. Those indulging in creating a public nuisance in the name of agitation and targeting public properties would not be spared, the state’s additional chief home secretary Chaitanya Prasad said. “District police have been directed to pick up the trouble mongers,” he said.
Police complaints have been lodged against four coaching institutes in Masaurhi for their suspected role in stone pelting at the Taregana station on Saturday. “As many as 191 persons have been arrested in the district on the charges of holding the city to ransom,” district magistrate Chandrashekhar Singh said.
In Telangana’s Secunderabad, police officials said they have not found the involvement of outsiders in the violence. “There was absolutely no involvement of any outside antisocial elements and the attacks were carried only by the army job aspirants, who were misguided by the heads of the coaching institutes,” additional director general of police, railways, Sandeep Sandilya said.
“The suspected mastermind behind the violence, a coaching institute director, is now in the custody of the Telangana police. He is being questioned,” Sandilya said. Overall, 46 people have been arrested for the violent attacks and arson at the Secunderabad railway station.
“All these were arrested in the last two days and remanded to judicial custody,” Sandilya said. “We could not make fresh arrests on Sunday, as we are in the process of identifying more protestors who took part in the violence.”
In Uttar Pradesh, the police have lodged a total 387 arrests have been made in connection with the violent protests. Of these, 145 people have been booked under Section 151 of the Criminal Procedure Code, while 242 have been booked in cases related to violence and arson.
Police have lodged 34 FIRs in connection with the protests till Sunday, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar said.
“They can be kept in police custody for a maximum of 24 hours,” Kumar added.
In Ahmedabad, 14 people were detained after they assembled without permission to protest against the Agnipath scheme, police said. Around 100 people had gathered at a spot in the city’s Meghaninagar area.
“We detained 14 of them as they had gathered without permission,” Meghaninagar police station’s inspector J P Chauhan said. However, one of the agitators said: “We were protesting in the Gandhian way, but we were not allowed to sit even for a few minutes as police arrived and detained us. We want permission to protest as long as our demands are not met and the scheme is not taken back.” He declined to be named.
In Uttarakhand, between 300 and 400 unidentified people were booked by police for allegedly staging a violent protest on the Nainital national highway at Tokonia Chouraha on Friday. The young protestors had turned violent, misbehaved and entered into a scuffle with cops and passersby, and vandalised public property, police said.
Police had used “mild force” to disperse the crowd, they said. Haldwani city magistrate Richa Singh and three cops sustained injuries in the confrontation, said Pankaj Bhatt, senior superintendent of police, Nainital.