Under the Centre’s new Agnipath recruitment scheme, the registration process for the first batch of Agniveers will begin on June 24 and the online examination would be held on July 24, said a top military official on Sunday.
Addressing a joint press conference of the tri-services, Air Marshal SK Jha said, “Registration process for the first batch of Agniveers will start from June 24. The phase-I online examination process would start on July 24. The first batch would be enrolled by December and training would commence by December 30.”
Navy Chief of Personnel, Vice Admiral Dinesh Tripathi said, “From November 21 this year, the first naval ‘Agniveers’ will start reaching the training establishment INS Chilka, Odisha. Both female and male Agniveers are allowed for this.”
Additional Secretary Lt Gen Anil Puri, Department of Military Affairs (DMA), Indian Army’s Adjutant General Lt Gen Bansi Ponappa, Indian Navy’s Chief of Personnel Vice Admiral Dinesh Tripathi and Indian Air Force’s Personnel in-charge Air Marshal SK Jha held a joint press conference on the Agniveer scheme on Sunday.
Lt Gen Puri said that the Centre will start with the recruitment of 46,000 Army aspirants to ‘analyse’ the scheme.
“In next 4-5 years, our intake (of soldiers) will be 50,000-60,000 & will increase to 90,000 – 1 lakh subsequently. We’ve started small at 46,000 to analyse the scheme…and to build up infra capacity,” said Lt Gen Puri.
He further said, “Our intake of ‘Agniveers’ will go up to 1.25 lakhs in near future and will not remain at 46,000 which is the present figure.”
Earlier on Sunday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a meeting and the three Services chiefs.
The Union Cabinet on June 14 approved a recruitment scheme for Indian youth to serve in the three services of the Armed Forces called Agnipath and the youth selected under this scheme will be known as Agniveers.
