Important: Army to cut manpower at its training centres by 25%

New Delhi: Army headquarters has asked its training centres to cut down their manpower by 25 percent.  The move comes at a time when the Government is bringing a new recruitment policy, Tour of Duty, for the armed forces. Army recruitment is halted for over two years, because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A directive from the Army headquarters to all 46 regimental centres said, "As there is negligible training taking place in the last two years, all regimental centres are to be manned at 75 percent of its authorised manpower at the levels of naik and below."

However, it further said, "once the recruitment process recommences, strength may be built up accordingly."

It said that all combatant manpower attached with regimental centres and record offices would be reverted to their parent units forthwith. The Army plans to deploy these combatants on the border areas and also for counter-terrorism operations.

The move is already facing opposition from the regimental training centres, as they have expressed their inability to reduce manpower since their staff is engaged in multiple internal security duties.

Moreover, training centres are already short-staffed and the officers' strength has come down to half. They, however, have agreed to reduce the number of instructors till fresh recruitment starts.

The reduction of manpower in training centres comes at a time when the Army is gearing up to restart the recruitment process under the new Tour of Duty (ToD) scheme. If everything goes well, the Army is planning to open its recruitment by September.

Tour of Duty

The new plan termed as the 'Tour of Duty' (ToD) was envisaged in 2020 by the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) headed by the late Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat. Its objective was primarily to reduce the ballooning services pension pay-outs in order to effect savings in India's declining annual defence budget to finance long-postponed military modernisation.

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