Responding to the violent protests in western Uttar Pradesh on Friday against the Agnipath scheme, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) suspended its plan to protest at the district headquarters on Saturday, June 18, 2022. Instead, party president Chaudhary Jayant Singh and party MLAs visited Kisan Ghat and undertook a silent protest against the short-term recruitment scheme in the armed forces. Mr. Singh demanded the government roll back the scheme and appealed to protesters to use peaceful means to express their anguish.
Meanwhile, describing the Agnipath scheme as a “well-disguised fraud in the name of employment”, the Bharatiya Kisan Union’s (BKU) national spokesperson Rakesh Tikait said the organisation will launch an agitation against the scheme on June 30 by holding a sit-in protest at district headquarters in Uttar Pradesh.
Recently, Mr. Singh had written to the Ministry of Defence demanding the cut-off age for recruitment be extended by two years because of the pandemic. Mr. Singh said the Ministry had responded that it would be against the established procedure of recruitment and would not be fair with the current batch of aspirants.
