Agnipath: RLD announces state-wide protests in UP against new scheme

Noida/Mathura, Jun 16: The Rashtriya Lok Dal has announced protests at all district headquarters in Uttar Pradesh against the Agnipath scheme at 11 am on Saturday. The RLD on Thursday also announced a campaign named 'Yuva Panchayat' in support of the youth in western Uttar Pradesh in the coming days to pressure the government to withdraw the new initiative for temporary recruitments in the armed forces.

Party chief Jayant Chaudhary made the 'Yuva Panchayat’ campaign announcement on social media, even as violent protests against Agnipath erupted in various parts of the state on Thursday. "Maafi Veer Adarsh, Jumla Veer Pracharak, Bhashan Veer Neta - Do not make the Indian Armed Forces 'Agnivir'," Chaudhary said in a cryptic tweet in Hindi.

The Yuva Panchayat will kick-off on June 28 from Shamli and similar youth congregations will be held in Mathura, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Bulandshahr, Amroha, Moradabad, Aligarh, Agra, Ghaziabad and will be culminated in Baghpat on July 16, according to the party's schedule. The Centre had on Tuesday unveiled the Agnipath scheme for the recruitment of soldiers in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force largely on a four-year short-term contractual basis, in a major overhaul of the decades-old selection process.

Under the scheme, youths between 17-and-a-half and 21 years of age will be inducted into the three services. After completion of the four-year tenure, the scheme provides for retaining 25 per cent of the recruits for regular service. The recruits would also get a corpus fund upon being relieved from the service but would not be entitled to post-retirement benefits such as pension like the regular soldiers. PTI