Cricketer M S Dhoni and industrialist Anand Mahindra are among the members of a committee the Ministry of Defence constituted on Thursday to review the National Cadet Corps and recommend ways to restructure it to make it more relevant.
Baijayant Panda, former Rajya Sabha member and the Vice-President of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been appointed as the chairman of the committee constituted by the Union Ministry of Defence. It also included two other BJP MPs – former Union Minister Col (Retd) Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Indian Council of Cultural Relation (ICCR) chief Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.
The committee has been tasked to conduct a comprehensive review of the NCC and to suggest ways to make it more relevant in view of the changing times.
Panda posted on Twitter that the constitution of the committee by the Ministry of Defence reflected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for a revamped NCC for “youth empowerment, nation-building and national integration”.
The Terms of Reference of the Committee broadly provided for suggesting measures, which could empower the NCC cadets to contribute more effectively towards nation-building and national developmental efforts in various sectors, propose measures for gainful engagement of its alumni for the betterment of the organisation as a whole and to study or recommend best practices of similar international youth organisations for inclusion in the NCC curriculum, the MoD said in a press release issued in New Delhi.
While delivering the Independence Day speech on August 15 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the government’s decision to expand the reach of the NCC to remote locations.
More than 1,075 schools and colleges in the border and coastal areas had been identified and the enrolment had begun in November 2020. It had also been decided to give preference to NCC cadets in employment in Central Armed Police Forces from May 2020. The Youth Exchange Programme Allowance for the NCC cadets had been increased from Rs 100 per day to Rs 750 and the number of countries identified for such exchanges had been increased from 10 to 15.
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(Published 16 September 2021, 14:09 IST)
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