Hundreds of job aspirants on Friday held a violent demonstration before the Army office at Cantonment Road here to protest against the Agnipath scheme launched by the Centre.
Demanding withdrawal of the scheme, the agitators belonging to different districts blocked the vehicular traffic causing inconvenience to commuters. The demonstrators also resorted to vandalism and smashed some hoardings and other public properties.
The police seeing the situation getting out of control resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the agitators.
The agitators said that, “We need immediate cancellation of ‘Tour of Duty’ (ToD). Besides, we demand the Centre to hold a written examination for recruitment as soon as possible. For the last one and half years, the Centre has not been doing anything noteworthy for our posting though we were selected and are awaiting next procedure of joining. We are not able to appear for other interviews because of it.
Notably, the protests began after the Centre launched the scheme on Tuesday, which proposes recruitment of Army aspirants on a contractual basis for four years followed by a compulsory retirement for most without gratuity and pension benefits.
As the Army aspirants across the nation intensified protests against the scheme, the Central Government on Thursday announced a one-time relaxation of two years in age limit from 21 years to 23 years for the year 2022 as Army recruitment had remained stalled for the last two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.