The mother of Kirti Chakra-winning soldier Captain Anshuman Singh on Tuesday said her request to the Centre is to stop the Agniveer scheme of temporary recruitments to the Indian Army.
“With folded hands I will request the government to stop the Agniveer scheme. It is for four years and it is not correct. Pension, canteen and every other facility that a soldier has been given should be continued,” Manju Singh said in Rae Bareli after meeting Rahul Gandhi, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the local MP.
On July 5, President Draupadi Murmu had conferred the Kirti Chakra posthumously on Captain Anshuman Singh, of the Army Medical Corps, 26th battalion, the Punjab Regiment, who succumbed to burn injuries suffered while he attempted to retrieve medicines from a nearby medical facility near an ammunition dump that had caught fire from a short-circuit at Siachen in the intervening night of July 18-19.
He had also rescued several individuals trapped inside a fibre-glass hut near the dump before he turned his attention towards the medical facility.
Soon after the defence investiture ceremony, the ministry of defence had released a video of Smriti Singh, Anshuman’s widow, who was in a long-distance relationship with Anshuman for eight long years after which they tied the knot in February last year.
The night of the fire was the last when she could speak to her husband, who was posted to Siachen barely a couple of months after their marriage.
The late Captain Singh had graduated from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. Siachen, where he was part of Operation Meghdoot, was his first posting.
“Unfortunately, within two months of marriage, he got posted to Siachen. On July 18, we had a long conversation about how our life will be in the next 50 years – we would build a house, have kids,” Smriti had recounted.
The next morning, she was informed Captain Singh was no more.
“We met him [Rahul Gandhi] during the Investiture ceremony. As the leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi was also present there. Since he was here in Rae Bareli and we live in Lucknow, we thought of meeting him. I have lost my young son. Rahul Gandhi too has lost his grandmother and father. He can empathise," said Ravi Pratap Singh, the soldier's father.
Manju Singh said most of the discussion was around the army and the Agnipath scheme. "He [Rahul] is right. There cannot be two types of soldiers. The government should listen to what he has said," she said.
In his speech in Parliament on July 1, Rahul had called out the Narendra Modi government’s Agnipath scheme of recruiting soldiers for four years as a “use and throw scheme”. It had created a huge uproar, including an intervention by defence minister Rajnath Singh.
Referring to an Agniveer Ajay Kumar, killed in a landmine explosion on January 18 in Jammu and Kashmir’s Naushera, the leader of Opposition had claimed the government had not paid the compensation to the fallen soldier’s family.
Rahul has been vocal against the recruitment scheme, which he says discriminates between soldiers.
The government had refuted the charges, with the defence minister claiming Rs 1 crore was paid to the family as compensation. The family had claimed though the Punjab government had offered some assistance, none came from the Centre.
The Indian Army in a post on ‘X” (formerly Twitter) claimed Rs. 98.39 lakh had already been paid to the family. The statement did not provide a break-up of the compensation. Several commentators familiar with the army and the Agnipath scheme pointed out, around Rs. 48 lakh was part of the insurance that he was entitled to and not a “compensation”.
