Pallamraju exhorts NCC cadets on national integration

Kakinada, Oct 12 (UNI) Minister of State for Defence M M Pallamraju today said the NCC would inculcate discipline, character and patriotism among the cadets and the camps would focus on better interaction among the NCC cadets of different states and national integration, which is the need of the hour.

Addressing the NCC cadets after inspecting the ceremonial parade as a part of the Special national integration camp held at the APSP Battalion grounds here, Mr Pallamraju said the NCC training would enable the cadets to shape themselves as bright citizens.

Stating that the role of the NCC cadets was pivotal during emergencies such as natural calamities and disasters, he cited how during the recent Bihar floods they took part in the rescue and relief operations and rendered yeoman service to the people in distress.

Pointing out that there were 13 lakh students enrolled as NCC cadets all over the country that constitutes four percent of the total students strength, Pallamraju said major chunk of 1.30 lakh NCC cadets were alone from Andhra Pradesh. Though there is a lot of demand for enrolement into the NCC, he said, they were not able to expand owing to shortage of instructors.

To overcome the problem, he said, plans were afoot to engage the services of ex-servicemen as the instructors. In order to meet the demand, he said, the Government had decided to increase the strength of NCC from the existing 13 lakh to 15 lakh during the current year.

As part of the training programme, Mr Pallamraju said, career counselling had been initiated recently and two lakh cadets were counselled to choose better career of their choice.

He claimed that the NCC-C' Certificate holders joining the armed forces had gone up considerably in recent years due to the incentives provided to them in recruitment.

Earlier, accompanied by Lt Gen Prakash S. Chaudhary, Director General of NCC, the Minister had inspected the guard of honour and colourful march-past presented by the NCC contingents.

UNI XR/BR RL NS1648