Letter of Defense Ministry related to the Agnipath Scheme is Fake

The spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense clarified to us that the viral letter is Fake.

Indian Army has come up with a new recruitment scheme known as “Tour of Duty” or Agnipath scheme in which civilians can be inducted into Indian Airforce, Army or Navy for four years. It is a short-term recruitment plan for Indian citizens in the age group of 17.5-21 years. The recruits thus inducted into the army will be called ‘Agniveers’ and they will serve the army for 4 years before retirement. 

However, many army aspirants were not pleased with the scheme and everal parts of the country witnessed violent protests. The aspirants demanded that the government must take back the TOD or Agnipath scheme. 

Amidst this, an image of a letter purportedly from the Ministry of Defence is widely circulating on social media. Users claim that the Ministry has issued this letter related to the Agnipath scheme. The letter states that the personnel under Other Ranks (ORs) attested after January 1, 2019, and not promoted to the rank of Naik or equivalent, will now come under Agnipath Scheme.

We also received this letter for verification on our WhatsApp Fact line number- 9049053770. 

This letter is also circulating on Twitter.

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Fact Check- 

We started our investigation, by searching for relevant news reports about this letter. However, we could not find any relevant news reports about the Ministry of Defence releasing such a letter. If the Ministry had released such a letter, it would have definitely made the news. However, we could not find any report that said any such thing.

MK Ramanna who is the Additional Secretary to Government of India signed the viral letter in question. Upon checking the name in the rank of the Additional Secretary on the Ministry of Defence website, we could not find anybody with this name.

Next, Fact Crescendo reached out to the principal spokesperson of the Ministry of Defence, A Bharat Bhushan Babu who confirmed to us that the viral letter is Fake. He also sent us a clarification tweet by PIB India’s Fact Checking arm.

We found PIB Fact Check’s tweet, which stated that he viral letter is Fake and the Ministry of Defence did not release any such letter regarding the Agnipath Scheme.

Conclusion- 

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the video to be False. The spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense clarified to us that the viral letter is Fake. The Ministry of Defense did not release any such letter regarding the Agnipath Scheme.