Agniveers Integrating Well In Army, Says General Manoj Pande

The integration of Agniveers into the Army is moving forward well and there has been positive feedback about them from the field units, Chief of Army Staff Gen. Manoj Pande said on Thursday.

Asked at a press conference about reservations against the Agnipath scheme, Gen. Pande said the final structure of the scheme took shape following a consultative process.

In June 2022, the government rolled out the Agnipath recruitment scheme for short-term induction of defence personnel with an aim to bring down the age profile of the three services.

It provides for recruiting those in the age bracket of 17-and-a-half years and 21 years for a four-year period, with a provision to retain 25 per cent of them for 15 more years.

On his predecessor Gen. MM Naravane's account on the evolution of the Agnipath scheme that he penned down in an upcoming book, the Army chief chose not to give a direct comment.

"In terms of the comments by my predecessor, it would be unfair to say anything on that," Gen. Pande said.

"But I just wish to reiterate here that the final framework (and) structure of the Agnipath scheme came about after a process of consultation and it took into account whatever issues we had to put across," he said.

"From here on, we need to move forward," Gen. Pande said.

"The acceptability, the positivity and the ownership and the integration of the Agniveers in the units are happening well," he said.

The Army chief also noted that the "feedback" from various units about the Agniveers is "positive".

He said the Army is facing a few challenges in terms of training, but added that most of those are at the "tactical level".

The challenges are being addressed by tweaking certain norms, Gen. Pande said.

He also noted that the Army is trying to harmonise various training modules between Agnivers and regular soldiers.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)