If Voted To Power, Congress Will Scrap Agnipath & Reintroduce Old Military Recruitment System

New Delhi: The Congress on Monday said if the party wins the upcoming elections, it will abolish BJP government’s military recruitment scheme Agnipath, and reinstate the previous system.

“In the long term, this scheme (Agnipath) will not benefit anybody except saving some money for the government of India. We in the Congress party feel that we should go back to the old recruitment system,” Congress general secretary Sachin Pilot said during a press conference.

Earlier in the day, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge sent a letter to President Droupadi Murmu restating concerns about the newly-introduced scheme, which reduces tenure and provides fewer service benefits.

Kharge expressed concerns about the uncertainty faced by nearly 2 lakh young men and women as a result of the discontinuation of the regular recruitment process in the armed forces.

“Our Defence expenditure is increasing… it was recently said that we are earning a lot of money through Defence exports… that we are becoming independent and doing indigenous manufacturing. If our Defence department is generating so much income, and we are becoming so capable, then the most important thing would be to make resources available for jobs, recruitment, and families of our brave soldiers,” Pilot argued.

He referenced Kharge’s letter — addressed to the President, who is the supreme commander of Indian armed forces — and criticised the Agnipath scheme as a “politically motivated” cost-saving measure and accused the government of “undermining” the army.

“It is closing avenues of employment. I think it has been done in an ad-hoc fashion, without much thought to prospects of how the Army would function. We in the Congress party believe that the Agnipath programme is not a positive development and we will certainly go back to the old recruitment system when people vote us back,” Pilot added.

Congress MP Deepender Hooda also lashed out at the BJP-led Centre.

Enrollments under Agnipath began in June 2022. The scheme entails recruitment of individuals aged between 17-and-a-half to 21 years for a four-year duration, with the option of retaining 25 per cent of the recruitees for an additional 15 years.