NEW DELHI: The Army on Tuesday denied any bias in its recruitment procedures and said it was trying to correct the skewed pattern of recruitment without disturbing the present structure.

Speaking to newspersons ahead of a major recruitment drive for soldiers, army officials said the shortage of officers had come down due to increased capacity of the training institutions. "A couple of years back the shortage of officers was 14,000. It has now come down to 11,000 because of an increase in the capacity of our training institutions. Gradually we will reduce it further," said Amar Aul, Additional Director-General (Recruitment) at the army headquarters here.

Recruitment rallies

Major Gen. Aul admitted that there were more soldiers from six north Indian States due to historical reasons but the Army was trying to correct the skewed regional ratio though recruitment rallies.

"There are two kinds of enrolment — fixed class as in Gurkha and Sikh regiments where we can't take anybody else. To that extent we have to go for recruitments in the catchment areas of that community or caste.

To reduce the skewed ratio, the entire country is covered during enrolments for `all caste, all India' regiments [like artillery, armoured, etc.]. This way we have tried to reduce the ratio but we cannot mix up our fixed class regiments," he said.

Army officials acknowledged that the base for recruiting Gorkhas from Nepal had reduced due to turbulence but there was no shortage in finding recruits for one of the country's largest infantry battalions of which 60 per cent are non-Indians.

"Earlier we used to go to remote areas to recruit soldiers from Nepal. We have now restricted our activity to Kathmandu and a few other districts. There is no dearth of boys and adequate security is provided by the Nepalese Army," he said.

`Stay clear of middlemen'

Maj. Gen. Aul along with Raj Sujlana appealed to applicants to stay clear of persons posing as middlemen.

"The system is fair and the question of malpractice in recruitment can't happen. We are coordinating with the civil administration to ensure that touts are not active during the recruitment process," said Gen. Sujlana.

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