All petitions challenging Agnipath scheme dismissed by Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed all the petitions challenging 'Agnipath' scheme for the recruitment of Agniveers in the armed forces.

"All petitions challenging Agnipath Scheme are dismissed," said the court, which observed that the scheme was made in the national interest. While 18 petitions wanted the reversal of the previous recruitment scheme, five challenged the Agnipath scheme.

While dismissing the batch of petitions, the bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad said there was no reason to interfere with it. The court also dismissed petitions relating to the recruitment process for the armed forces under certain previous advertisements while clarifying that such candidates do not have a right to seek recruitment, PTI reported.

In December, the Delhi High Court had reserved its judgement on a batch of petitions challenging the Centre's Agnipath scheme for recruitment in the armed forces.

The court had asked the counsel for petitions and the Centre to file written submissions by December 23, after which the court went on vacation.

The Agnipath scheme, unveiled on June 14, lays out rules for the recruitment of youths in the armed forces.

According to these rules, those between 17-and-a-half and 21 years of age are eligible to apply and they would be inducted for a four-year tenure. The scheme allows 25 per cent of them to be granted regular service subsequently. After the scheme was unveiled, protests erupted in several states against the scheme.

Later, the government extended the upper age limit to 23 years for recruitment in 2022.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati and central government standing counsel Harish Vaidyanathan, representing the Centre, had said the Agnipath scheme is one of the biggest policy changes in defence recruitment and was going to bring a paradigm shift in the way the armed forces recruit personnel.

The government submitted that the Agnipath scheme was introduced in the exercise of its sovereign function to make national security and defence more "robust, "impenetrable" and "abreast with changing military requirements".

With inputs from PTI