Covid effect: Armed forces short of 10k officers, 1.35L troops

Following two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, the armed forces are short of more than 10,000 officers and 1,35,000 men as the recruitment process was seriously hampered in the last two financial years, the Defence Ministry informed the Parliament on Monday.

The worst sufferer is the Indian Army with 7,903 vacancies among the officers and nearly 1,18,500 vacancies for the JCOs and men. The Indian Navy comes second with a shortfall of 1,447 officers and 11,587 sailors. The Indian Air Force has a vacancy of 761 officers and 5,819 men.

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Responding to a question by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge in the Rajya Sabha, Ajay Bhatt, the minister of state for defence also shared the number of junior commissioned officers and men recruited by the army in the last five years, showing the ups and downs in the recruitment trend.

The figures were in the range of 50,000 plus in 2017-18 and 2018-19 before zooming up to more than 80,000 in 2019-20. But immediately it fell to 12,000 in 2020-21 when the recruitment process was halted due to the pandemic. While there was no recruitment in 2021-22, the retirement continued, creating a large gap in the JCO/OR strength.

The navy too witnessed a drop in the recruitment of sailors in 2020 when just about half of the men recruited by the force in a year, were inducted in the service.

On an average nearly 60,000 men retire from the armed forces every year, of which 50,000 are from the army.

Bhatt said 40,000 posts of Agniveers had been released this year for the army along with 3,000 each for the navy and air force. The navy has already inducted its first batch of 3,000 Agniveers who are currently undergoing training at INS Chilka.