The Central government has announced that it will recruit soldiers for the armed forces for a tenure of four years under what it called the Agnipath scheme. Under the new plan, ostensibly launched to curb the ballooning pension bills and to keep the forces lean and more efficient, the government will give the option of extending the service for a full 15-year tenure to only 25 percent of all recruits. These 25 percent soldiers will be the most driven and best performing soldiers. The remaining 75 percent will be asked to leave with a substantial severance. The Centre will support them in starting new careers or higher education. The Ministry of Home Affairs said the soldiers, to be called Agniveers, will be preferred during the recruitment drive for Central Armed Police Force (CAPF). Several states have promised that those discharged from the armed forces will be preferred for police recruitment. According to reports, Agnipath scheme's Agniveers' salaries will be increased by around 10 per cent every year. Army Chief General Manoj Pande said the first Agniveer will join the army by December 2022. He said by mid-next, the first batch will be deployed to operational and non-operational areas. Talking about Agnipath protests, he said the army aspirants were misinformed about the Agniveer scheme.
What will be the monthly salary of Agniveer soldiers under the Agnipath scheme?
According to reports, the monthly salary of an Agniveer soldier for the first year will be Rs 30,000. However, they will receive only Rs 21,000. Rs 9,000 per month will be deducted from their salaries monthly. This money will go to a corpus. The Centre will add an equal amount as the soldiers to the fund. At the time of exit after four years, Agniveer soldiers will be paid around Rs 11.77 lakh, lump-sum. The corpus will be called Seva Nidhi and the Seva Nidhi Package will be exempted from income tax.
For the second year, the overall salary will be Rs 33,000. 30 percent will be deducted for Seva Nidhi Package. For the third year the salary will be Rs 36,500. For the fourth year the salary will be Rs 40,000. Soldiers will not be entitled to gratuity.
There won't be any provident fund deductions as the Seva Nidhi is similar to the employee provident fund scheme. The soldiers will get a free insurance cover of Rs 48 lakh for the duration of their service period.
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Why did the Centre devise the Agnipath scheme?
The Central government is projecting the Agnipath scheme as the much-needed overhaul of the decades-old recruitment process. The government claims the scheme will lead to an improvement in the age profile of the three services. The Army said the Agniveer scheme will also help reduce the average age from 32 to 26. The scheme was implemented after two years of talks. The three service chiefs are in strong agreement with the scheme. Implementing this scheme will help the government free up funds for the modernisation of the forces.
