Amid protests against the Centre's newly announced recruitment scheme Agnipath, South block officials on Thursday said the future of the scheme, contrary to what protesters are thinking, is not insecure. Several avenues will open up for the Agniveers and they can choose to be entrepreneurs, pursue further studies and can opt for jobs. Extensive consultations with served armed forces officials were held for the last two years before launching the scheme and many former military officers supported the scheme, defence ministry officials said. Also Read: Train set ablaze as protests against Agnipath scheme escalate in Bihar | Videos
Defence minister Rajnath Singh at the launch of the Agnipath scheme on Tuesday.
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Those who want to be entrepreneurs will get a financial package and bank loan scheme; those who want to study further will be given a certificate equivalent to that of Class 12 and those who wish to opt for jobs will be given priority in CAPFs and state police forces, an official said.
"It is just a myth that opportunities for youth will decrease as a result of Agnipath scheme. In the coming years, recruitment of Agniveers will be around triple of the current recruitment in armed forces," an official said.
The scheme will not bring any change to the present regimental system. "In fact it will be further accentuated because the best of Agniveers will be selected, further boosting cohesiveness of the unit," an official said.
Emphasising that such a short-term recruitment system exists in many countries and is a tried-and-tested practice for a youthful and agile army, the defence ministry official said it is wrong to think that 21-year-olds are immature. "At no point of time will there be more youngsters than experienced people. The present scheme will only bring about a right mix of 50%-50%, slowly in a very long run, of youngsters and experienced supervisory ranks," the official said adding that in the first year, the number of Agniveers to be recruited would only make up 3% of the armed forces.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/India News/Future of Agniveers not insecure, senior military officials consulted: Govt
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