All stakeholders agreed on Agnipath: Army chief

The Agnipath scheme for short-term induction of soldiers was finalised after extensive consultations, army chief General Manoj Pande said on Thursday, in comments that come weeks after his predecessor General Manoj Mukund Naravane created a stir by revealing that the Agnipath scheme caught the army by surprise and was a bolt out of the blue for the air force and the navy.

"It will be unfair for me to say anything on the comments by my predecessor," Pande said during his customary annual media briefing ahead of the Army Day on January 15. "But I just wish to reiterate here that the final framework, structure of the Agnipath scheme came about after an iterative process, after consultations. It took into account whatever issues we had to put across," he said in response to a question on Naravane's take on the scheme.

Naravane's remarks on the scheme figured in the recently published excerpts of his yet-to-be-released autobiography titled Four Stars of Destiny. The excerpts of the memoirs, reviewed by news agency PTI, revealed that Naravane sounded out the Prime Minister about the "tour of duty" scheme for the short-term induction of soldiers in the army in early 2020, but months later the PMO came out with a formulation with a wider scope to include all the three services. He has written in the book that the army's initial view was that 75% of the personnel to be recruited could be retained while 25% should be released.

On Thursday, Pande also added that the army has received positive feedback on Agniveers, as soldiers recruited under the Agnipath model are termed.