new delhi: The Congress on Tuesday accused the Union government of “betraying” the country’s soldiers and youth by seeking to absorb Agniveers in private security agencies after the completion of their four-year service.
Addressing a press conference, Colonel (retd.) Rohit Chaudhary, chairman of the party’s ex-servicemen department, said the move exposed the government’s “duplicity” on its earlier promise to provide permanent, pension-based employment to Agniveers. The Congress maintained that this decision effectively reduced young, trained soldiers to “private guards” after they served the nation.
Colonel (retd.) Chaudhary argued that the Agnipath recruitment scheme had already weakened the armed forces’ structure, reducing total strength from about 15 lakh to 11 lakh personnel, including roughly 2 lakh Agniveers. He said nearly 75 per cent of those recruited under the scheme would finish their tenure from January 2026 without any government employment assurance. “This is not a reform; it is the systematic outsourcing of national defence,” he said.
Citing a recent notification issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs and implemented by the Haryana government, the party said the document proposes to place trained Agniveers under “absorption in private security agencies under the administrative control of various ministries and departments.”
The briefing linked the policy to what the party called “growing privatisation in the defence sector,” alleging that the government’s proximity to large industrial groups was influencing military recruitment and procurement. The Congress asserted that the notification marked “the beginning of private armies under corporate sponsorship.” Reiterating the party’s Jai Jawan campaign promise, Colonel (retd.) Chaudhary said a Congress government would scrap the Agnipath scheme.