Army plans 96 recruitment rallies for Agniveers this year

Army recruitment rallies nationwide, including for women Agniveers, with online entrance exams and increased intake under Agnipath scheme.

The Army is scheduled to to carry out 96 recruitment rallies across the country in the fiscal year 2024-25. Eleven of the rallies will be exclusively for the selection of women Agniveers into the Corps of the Military Police.

“The Army has scheduled an online combined entrance examination that will span 174 locations nationwide. The examination window, set from April 22 to May 7 is expected to witness participation from an unprecedented 12.8 lakh registered candidates,” an Army official said. “The recruitment plan seeks to attract skilled and motivated individuals capable of contributing to the nation’s security.”

The entrance examination would be followed by physical and medical examination, after which shortlisted candidates would be declared.

On June 14, 2022, the government announced the Agnipath scheme for recruitment of soldiers into the armed forces for four years doing away with the earlier process. The age bracket for new recruits was fixed at 17.5 to 21 years of age. In the first intake, the Army inducted 40,000 Agniveers in two batches. The Navy recruited around 3,000 Agniveers and the Air Force around 2,700 in the first cycle.

The overall intake has been capped at 1.75 lakh till 2026. Intake of recruits under Agnipath will increase from 46,000 annually in the first four years, to 90,000 in the fifth year to 1,25,000 from the sixth year, officials had stated earlier.

Agniveers, on completion of four years, will get an opportunity to join the regular cadre and up to 25% would be taken in.

Former Army chief Gen. Manoj Naravane says in his upcoming memoir, Four Stars of Destiny (excerpts of which were released late last year) that the Agnipath scheme had taken the Army “by surprise” while it was a “bolt out of the blue” for Navy and Air Force, and that it took him some time to explain to Navy and Air Force chiefs that his proposal had only been Army-centric and that he was equally surprised by these developments.