In light of the recently announced Agnipath scheme for army recruitment, a social post accompanying a purported letter in the name of Additional Secretary to Government of India, asking the chief of tri-services to integrate all the ‘ORs enrolled after 01 January 2019 & those not promoted to a substantive rank of Naik or equivalent’ into the Agnipath scheme is being widely shared. The letter further lists out the regulations to be followed with respect to these recruits. Through this article let’s fact-check the authenticity of the letter shared in the post.
Claim: Additional Secretary to GoI’s letter asking to integrate the jawans/airmen/sailors enrolled after 2019 into the Agnipath scheme.
Fact: Agnipath scheme is related to the future recruitments. There are no reports stating recruits who enrolled after 01 January 2019 and failed to be promoted to a substantive rank of Naik or equivalent will be integrated into the Agnipath scheme. PIB has clarified rated the letter as fake, saying the Defence ministry has not issued any such letter. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Government of India recently announced the Agnipath scheme for recruiting the soldiers across the tri-services and the government has also released the first recruitment notification under this scheme. However, the scheme is related to the future recruitments and is not applicable to the already recruited soldiers.
Further, there are no reports stating that recruits who enrolled after 01 January 2019 and failed to be promoted to a substantive rank of Naik or equivalent, will also be integrated into the Agnipath scheme. If at all this news is true, media would have reported it. However, we could not find any such reports. Even while announcing the scheme, officials did not mention anything in line with the claim.
Further, as the letter went viral on social media, PIB has clarified that the letter is fake. Through a tweet, PIB stated that Defence ministry has not issued this letter.
To sum it up, this letter asking to integrate the recruits enrolled after 2019 into the Agnipath scheme is fake.
