Agnipath scheme protest | Five trains targeted by students in Bihar; BJP office set on fire in Nawada

The protests against the Centre’s new soldier recruitment scheme spread to different parts of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday with defence service candidates pelting stones at a government bus in Agra, and staging demonstrations in Bulandshahr and Ballia. In Ballia and neighbouring districts, movement of some trains was affected due to the protests. The stone pelting incident was reported in rural Agra’s Bah, while protests erupted in various pockets of Agra district. They also blocked NH-2, the Agra-Jaipur highway and MG Road. As violent protests against the new recruitment scheme Agnipath raged across several states, the government on Thursday issued a clarification, asserting that not only the new model will bring in new capabilities to the armed forces but will also open up avenues for youth in the private sector as well as help them in becoming entrepreneurs with the aid of the financial package. The clarification came in the wake of protests in several states, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Trains were set afire, window panes of buses smashed and passersby, including a ruling BJP MLA, pelted with stones in Bihar by Army job aspirants whose protest against the Central scheme continued for the second consecutive day. The government on Tuesday unveiled the scheme for the recruitment of soldiers in the Army, Navy and the Air Force largely on a four-year short-term contractual basis, in a major overhaul of the decades-old selection process.