New Delhi The Indian Navy started the registration for the Agneepath Recruitment Scheme on 1 July. It is reported that around 10,000 women have registered for this process within a few days of opening the portal.
The Indian Navy had on July 1 announced the commencement of the registration process under the Agneepath Recruitment Scheme. After registration, Indian Navy will start the online application process for the recruitment from July 15 to July 30.
This is the first time that the Indian Navy has allowed women to be recruited into the force as sailors, who will also be deployed on warships as per operational requirements. However, the Navy is yet to finalize the final number of women out of the 3000 sailors that it will induct in 2022.
“Till Sunday, around 10,000 women candidates had registered themselves,” government officials told the news agency. ANI,
The Navy is making arrangements for sailors of the Indian Navy at the premier basic training establishment INS Chilka on 21 November. The establishment will also have facilities for training of women sailors.
“The Agneepath scheme in the Navy will be gender-neutral. As we speak, there are 30 women officers sailing on board frontline warships. We have decided that the time has come to recruit women sailors as well, and in all trades in which Women will be involved who will go to sea,” Navy officials had said.
The armed forces had been inducting women into the 1.4 million-strong armed forces since the 1990s, but only in officer ranks. This change was introduced for the first time by the Indian Army in 2019-20 to recruit women in other ranks.
As a result of this, 100 women personnel are presently the Corps of Military Police (CMP).
The “transformative” Agneepath scheme, announced by Union Minister Rajnath Singh on June 14 in the presence of the three service chiefs, has a provision for the recruitment of youth of the age of 17 and a half years into the armed services. There is a provision to raise them to 21 for only four years and retain 25 per cent of them for 15 more years. The Center later increased the upper age limit for recruitment to 23 years in 2022.
There have been protests against the Agneepath scheme in several states and the government has announced support measures to allay fears.
The Union Cabinet had also approved the Agneepath scheme on June 14 and the youth selected under this scheme would be called ‘Agneepath’.
The government had announced that 46,000 firefighters would be recruited this year. It had said that the armed forces would have “a younger, fitter, diverse profile” to meet the challenges of the future.