The Delhi High court has been told by the Central government that its Agnipath scheme for recruitment into Army, Air Force and Navy will make the forces young.
It also added that disciplined and skilled manpower will be added to the society as these recruits who would exit after their tenure will prove to be a nationalist.
An affidavit was submitted by the government that the recruitment in armed forces constitutes an essential sovereign function and its decision to conduct these recruitment through the new ‘Agnipath Scheme’ is a policy decision taken for national security reasons.
The affidavit speaks volume about the sea change that have come with the change in the technology and skills employed in the modern warfare.
It further added that with new military technologies emerging at a rapid pace, the time-tested conventional formations of the armed forces were losing their edge, the affidavit stated.
This made structural changes in overall organisation of the armed forces a matter of necessity, the Centre argued.
The government said this while it was dealing with a batch of petitions before the High Court challenging the constitutional validity of the Agnipath scheme and recruitment into the armed forces as a whole.
These petitions will be heard by a division bench of the Delhi High Court on wednesday.
The Agnipath scheme proposed for inducting youth into the Army for four years, after which, 25 percent will be continued in the Indian Army while the rest will have to exit.
The introduction of the scheme had prompted widespread protests across the country, some of which turned violent. It had also led to a slew of petitions being filed in various courts.
The Supreme Court had in July transferred had listed all the petitions before itself as well as various High Courts across the country to the Delhi High Court.