New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs is working on framing new recruitment rules for all Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) to reserve 50 percent of constable-level vacancies for Agniveers, who will begin exiting the armed forces from 2026, ThePrint has learnt.
This comes after the MHA last week amended the BSF constable recruitment rules through a gazette notification, mandating a 50 percent quota for Agniveers—a significant upgrade from the earlier 10 percent quota.
After the BSF, the MHA is looking to amend recruitment rules for the other CAPFs, namely Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB). Sources said MHA is working out how it can incorporate the 50 percent quota for Agniveers across CAPFs without affecting the 50 percent reservation ceiling. A timeline for notifying these new rules is yet to be decided.
“Final modalities of how the Agniveers will be incorporated into CAPFs are yet to be done; key officials are still deliberating over it,” a government official told ThePrint.
Under the 2022-launched Agnipath scheme, Agniveers are recruited into Army, Navy, or Air Force for a four-year term, with one-fourth retained for longer service afterwards, and the rest relieved from service. Army inducted 46,000 Agniveers from the first batch of 2022.
Approximately 75 percent of the recruits to the Army from among these first Agniveers are to be relieved at the start of 2026.
New BSF rules
Under the revised rules—the BSF General Duty Cadre (Non-Gazetted) Recruitment (Amendment) Rules, 2025—the MHA mandated a 50 percent quota for Agniveers through direct recruitment in the BSF. Additionally, it has relaxed the age limit for Agniveers to be considered for induction into the BSF by five years for the first batch and three years for subsequent batches. The age criterion for CAPF recruitment is 18-23 years.
Moreover, the MHA has exempted Agniveers from the physical standard and physical efficiency exams, which are mandatory for BSF recruitments otherwise.
The police research & development bureau data on sanctioned and actual strength of forces show that CAPFs on 1 January 2024 had a sanctioned strength of 5,84,162 constables—higher than the 5,52,122 constables on the ground. The CRPF and the BSF had the highest sanctioned strengths of 1,74,468 and 1,51,842 constables, respectively.
‘Trained soldiers’
A CAPF officer welcomed the new deliberations, noting it would be easier to train Agniveers, who had already received training from the Army and served alongside regular Army personnel, for the CAPFs.
“We hire from ex-servicemen, as well as freshly appearing candidates. This rule would mandate maximum hiring from the Agniveers, which could be a win-win situation for both, ensuring smooth and seamless training processes,” a senior CAPF official told ThePrint, citing the yet-to-be-finalised rules to induct ex-Agniveers into the forces.
The existing CAPF recruitment rules mandate a quota of 27 percent for the Other Backward Classes, 15 percent for the Scheduled Castes, and 7.5 percent for the Scheduled Tribes, along with a quota of 15 percent for ex-servicemen after they retire from the Army, Air Force, or Navy, among other Union government services.
On the other hand, there are no reservations for recruitment to the armed forces.
‘No room now’
In some central forces, though, there’s no room immediately to take in Agniveers.
For instance, a government officer told ThePrint that the SSB will soon launch an advertisement to fill 4,000 constable vacancies, leaving no room for more inductees.
“Generally, the recruitment cycle repeats after two years, and it takes, on average, between nine months and 12 months to fill vacancies projected by any of the forces, because of the written and physical examinations that take place in between the time that the vacancies are advertised, and when those vacancies are filled,” the officer said.
So, Agniveers will be considered for induction into some of the central forces not before the 2028 recruitment cycle, if the MHA formally notifies the rules now, the officer added.
“The rules have been notified for the BSF first, because it is a comparatively bigger force, with its attrition, than any of the other remaining forces, such as the CISF and the SSB… the notification for the BSF could be the first among several extended to all the other forces,” the officer further said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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