Mumbai, India (CU)_ According to the officials, following the conclusion of the registration process for the Senior Secondary Recruit (SSR) and Matric Recruit (MR), the Indian Navy got more than 80,000 applications from female candidates. Under the Agnipath program, the aforementioned profiles will be recruited. According to the Indian Navy’s official Twitter handle, “Indian Navy’s SSR (Senior Secondary Recruit) and MR (Matric Recruit) registration process towards the #AgnipathRecruitmentScheme has been completed. 9.55 lakh Agniveer applicants including 82,000 women aspirants have registered”.
Prioritizing gender equality in all of its branches, the Indian Navy declared on June 20 that it will begin recruiting female sailors under the newly introduced Agnipath recruitment program. All the three services such as Army, Air Force and Navy comprise women officers; however, this is the first time that designations of Personnel Below Officers’ Rank (PBOR) are open to women.
Vice Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi, Chief of Personnel, stated at a tri-service press conference at the Ministry of Defence that the exact number of women sailors to be hired through the Agnipath scheme is still being discussed and that the training program for the first batch of Agniveers will commence in November of this year. He added, “The Indian Navy has 30 women officers at present sailing on different Indian Navy ships. We have decided that under the Agnipath scheme, we will recruit women also. They will be deployed on warships also”.
Further, he said that accommodations for female sailors are being arranged at INS Chilka in Odisha, the Indian Navy’s basic training base. Tripathi said, “From November 21 this year, the first naval ‘Agniveers’ will start reaching the training establishment INS Chilka, Odisha. Both female and male Agniveers are allowed for this”. The transformative Agnipath scheme, revealed by Union Minister Rajanath Singh on June 14 in the attendance of the three service chiefs, allows for the recruitment of 17-and-a-half to 21-year-olds into the armed services for only four years, with a provision to retain 25 percent of them for an additional 15 years. Later, the Center raised the upper age limit for recruitment in 2022 to 23 years.
On June 14, the Union Cabinet also authorized the Agnipath program, whose participants would be known as Agniveers. The government said that it will hire 46,000 Agniveers this year. To meet future challenges, the profile of the armed services will be younger, fitter, and more diversified. In several places, there have been demonstrations against the Agnipath program, and the government has promised support initiatives to reduce panic.
