The Agnipath program’s first year of recruiting calls for 46,000 new recruits, which is the lowest number of new recruits for all three services combined since 2015.
The government declared a one-time relaxation in the upper age restriction for recruits this year, lifting it from 21 to 23 years, claiming that there had been no recruitment in the past two years because to the Agnipath recruiting initiative.
This one-time exception, however, may cause issues in the future.
After two years of zero-recruitment, the government has decided to ease the age limit for the first year, which will result in a higher number of applicants competing for the 46,000 open posts.
Armed forces recruiting statistics provided with Parliament in March of this year show that in 2019-2020, a total of 80,572 troops below the rank of the officer were recruited via recruitment rallies. In the years afterwards, there has been no effort to attract new employees.
According to available data, the Army plans to employ more than 50,000 new troops year between 2015 and 2020.
This figure dropped from 71,804 new recruits in 2015-2016 to 52,447 in 2016-2017. The number of new recruits for the Army in 2017-2018 was considerably lower, at 50,026. In 2018-2019, this number increased to 53,431 people. 80,572 recruits were taken via Army rallies in the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
In contrast, this year’s total of 46,000 Agniveers will come from the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Over the first four years of the Agnipath program, 202,900 Agniveers will be inducted into the three services—175,000 of which will be for the Army. Over the next four years, this will equate to the recruitment of around 50,000 Agniveers every year for all three services.
More than 60% of all Army recruits have come from only eight states, according to information provided to Parliament.
According to the statistics, 186,795 persons from Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand have been enlisted in the Army since 2015. 308,280 people were enlisted in the Army during this time period. Approximately 60% of the total number of recruits came from these states.
Anger over the new policy will undoubtedly be greater in rural areas, where more than three-quarters of the Army’s recruits hail from these locations. On average, village residents made up 78.32% of Army new recruits in 2018-2019 and 77.20% of new Army recruits in 2019-2020.
Since the Covid-19 epidemic broke out in July of 2021, the Ministry of Defense had notified Parliament that recruiting rallies had been put on hold. This year, the Army held 47 rallies around the nation, but the process was halted by the epidemic, and the rallies did not result in any new members.
