After protesting in Parliament against the Agnipath recruitment policy in the armed forces for the last five days, Opposition members on Friday walked out of a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence claiming they were not allowed to discuss the new policy.

The Agnipath policy termed as “transformative” was rolled out on June 14.  Protests against it broke out in several parts of the country and several Opposition parties demanded its rollback.  The Government, however, ruled out scrapping it.

Sources said that at the meeting, the members of the Congress and the BSP urged committee chairman Jual Oram to allow a discussion on the Agnipath, arguing it has huge implications and required Parliamentary scrutiny, but were denied from doing so.

They added that Congress MPs KC Venugopal and Uttam Kumar Reddy, besides BSP’s Danish Ali, who are members of the panel, argued with the chairman that the Agnipath scheme has already been discussed in the Consultative Committee on Defence and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and the three service chiefs have made a presentation before it.  These three members later walked out, sources said.

The members said not allowing a discussion on Agnipath amounted to an insult to Parliament and not informing the committee about the scheme was a breach of privilege. They urged the chairman to list the issue for discussion in the next meeting, but the chairman denied permission, sources said.

Venugopal later tweeted, “We urged the Chairman to clarify why the Parliament Standing Committee on Defence was kept in dark on the Agnipath recruitment scheme? Why was the scheme not taken up in the committee’s budget scrutiny meetings despite involving financial implications? The Chairman turned a deaf ear to these crucial questions and the scheme was not discussed. No discussion in Parliament, no deliberations in the Parliament Standing Committees, thus goes the way of bulldozing legislations in the Modi era.”

The Opposition members highlighted that the Agnipath scheme was the biggest change in the armed forces since Independence and needed to be discussed in the Parliamentary Committee on Defence.  They also claimed that they raised the issue in the meetings of the business advisory committees of both Houses, but the Government was not ready to discuss the issue, sources said.

Oram is learnt to have said the issues to be discussed at the Parliamentary Standing Committee meetings are decided in advance at the beginning of the year and hence this request cannot be entertained now, sources said, adding after almost half an hour of discussion in the panel meeting, the three Opposition members staged a walkout in protest. Issues concerning ordinance factory boards and DRDO had been listed for discussion at the meeting.

Meanwhile, the Government on Friday said it has not formulated any scheme for the mandatory service of youth in the armed forces.

The Government also said more than 2,000 trains were affected due to protests which broke out in some States after the Agnipath policy was rolled out on June 14.

 Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt said in the Lok Sabha there was no plan for mandatory service for youth in the armed forces.  He also said there is no role of the Sainik schools in the implementation of the Agnipath scheme.

 He also said the recruitment rallies are held by the armed forces with an aim to cover all the districts, inter-alia, including the tribal areas of the country.  Bhatt gave this information in a written reply.