Agnipath 'work in progress', will make changes along the way, says Vice Chief of Army staff

Implementation will be slow, no changes planned for homogeneity of fighting units, he says

Lt. General B S Raju. Credit: PTI Photo

Lt. General B S Raju, Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS), answered questions on Agnipath in a Jan. 20 interview with The Indian Express. He discussed how the scheme would be tweaked in the coming years if needed.

"If there is a requirement to be tweaked, it will be done at the end of four to five years once we have some reasonable data," he told the publication. "Right now, we have a policy that has been well thought through and which we are implementing." When asked why a pilot study was not done, he said, "What we are doing is actually some kind of a pilot project but with very clear timelines put in place. The government has repeatedly said that they are amenable to modifications based on our experience."

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Responding to criticism about Agnipath interfering with Army cohesiveness, Lt. Gen. Raju said that there was no hurry and there were no plans to change the fighting units' homogeneity.

He dismissed suggestions that various provisions for reservation for Agniveers, like in the Coast Guard and at Defense PSUs, indicated that the scheme wasn't well thought out. Lt. Gen. Raju said that an Agniveer would be presented with opportunities after four years and that the scheme was designed to allow recruits to acquire a unique set of skills that would be confirmed with a multiple skilling certificate as per the National Skills Qualification Framework.

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He pointed out that the implementation would be slow and rejected the interpretation that the scheme could be used as a "finishing school". Further, he said that the 50 per cent cap for Agniveers in the Army would ensure balance and that the 25 per cent rehires per batch would go up proportionately.

Citing the example of the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), the VCOAS said that heterogeneity would not be a problem. "Today, we have come to an age where we can go with complete confidence that a heterogeneous set of people can come together and bond and be perfectly good soldiers," he said.

Lt. Gen. Raju responded to concerns about conflicts between the retained Agniveers and the others. He said that competition wasn't new to the Army as an institution and that the worries were misplaced.