Ex-jawans have slammed each other. Agnipath: Don’t play about with the army; what if they end up as gangsters after four years?

Ex-groups servicemen in Punjab and Haryana have slammed the Agnipath system for Army recruiting, claiming it is tantamount to “playing with the Army’s career” and urging the government to refrain from “experimenting with the Army.”

On Wednesday, I spoke with a group of ex-servicemen who had served as jawans, and they all opposed the idea to hire soldiers for four-year periods and keep only 25% of them for full pensionable service.

Retired havildar Premjit Singh Brar, district head of the Ex-Servicemen Welfare Union in Faridkot, claimed the Agnipath concept was comparable to forming a “private army,” and that the youth would not be interested in four-year deployments.