Govt strongly denies reports of military training of youths

The Government on Tuesday denied a recent report in a leading newspaper in regard to military training of youths and blamed the latter of sensationalising the whole matter by twisting facts.

The report said that the Government Military Training Plan will mobilise disciplined 10 lakh force of youth.

"Attention is drawn to the report in a leading newspaper of 17th July 2018 claiming Government Military Training Plan to mobilize disciplined 10 lakh force of youth. This is an unfortunate and deliberate attempt to create a wrong impression as if; Government is working for military training of 10 lakh youths annually," said the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The Government strongly denied the sensational misrepresentation made in the report.
"The fact is that, a meeting was held in PMO to revamp the National Cadet Corps (NCC) and National Service Scheme (NSS). Ministry of Youth Affairs, Ministry of Human Resource Development and NCC through the Ministry of Defense participated in the discussion," the press note read.

The discussion was mainly focused on taking measures for strengthening NCC & NSS and how youth could be empowered through these institutions.
NSS has been playing a very active role in the service of the nation particularly in the Government's Program such as Swatchh Bharat Mission.

Currently, there are 13.5 lakh cadets in NCC in the age group of 12 to 26 years with pan India presence in about 703 out of 716 districts. It was noted that there are a large number of educational institutions in the country including those 8600 on waitlist in which NCC is yet to be extended. There is also an existing shortage in the NCC manpower across the categories ranging from 5 percent to 36 percent.

The NCC has an annual budget allocation of about Rs. 2200 Cr. with Central Government share of about Rs. 1600 Cr. NCC with this meager resources, is not able to expand itself and to cover all the districts of the country and cater to the needs of waitlisted educational institutions.

It has been decided to set up a committee under the Chairmanship of Shri Anil Swarup, the then Secretary, School Education with suitable representations from NCC, M/o Youth Affairs and M/o HRD to suggest measures to strengthen NCC & NSS.

The committee is expected to touch on issues like expansion, strengthening training infrastructure, rationalizing resources, reducing manpower deficiency affecting NCC and NSS.

The committee will also submit measures for building synergies between these two institutions viz. NCC and NSS and further strengthen them for empowering youth.

(ANI)