The Delhi High Court on Monday dismissed the pleas challenging Centre's Agnipath military recruitment scheme, Live Law reported. A division bench headed by Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma said it does not find any reason to interfere with the scheme. The court had reserved its decision on December 15 last year.
"All petitions challenging Agnipath Scheme are dismissed," said the court. The HC said the scheme, launched on June 14, 2022, was made in national interest and to ensure that armed forces were better equipped.
The Agnipath scheme, a short-term recruitment scheme for a period of four years, saw massive protests across the nation last year. Most of the protesters against the Agnipath scheme had attributed the anger to the fact that the Army had stopped recruitment in 2020 and 2021 and the new model does not provide job guarantee to 75 per cent of the recruits.
The court also dismissed the petitions seeking resumption and enrolment as per previous recruitment scheme in defence services, saying the petitioners do not have a vested right to seek recruitment.
Out of 23 total petitions, five had challenged the Agnipath scheme. The other 18 petitions, which sought appointment as per previous recruitment scheme, have also been dismissed, Live Law reported.
The Centre had sought dismissal of the petitions, saying that defending India's territory required an agile, youthful and technologically sound armed forces.
The government further argued that the objective of the scheme was to have a young combat force that is physically and mentally capable of taking the new challenges.
On the aspect of four years duration of the service under the scheme, the Centre said that the duration of training was optimised to meet the organisational requirement.
What Is The Agnipath Scheme?
According to the Agnipath scheme, 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.
As per the salary structure, in the first year of employment, a soldier will get Rs 30,000. The in-hand amount will be Rs 21,000 while the rest Rs 9,000 will go to a corpus and the government will make an equal contribution per month. The monthly salary in the second, third and fourth year will be Rs 33,000, Rs 36,500 and Rs 40,000 respectively.
In the recently announced Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the payment received by the 'Agniveers' from the Agniveer Corpus Fund is proposed to be exempted from taxes.