Gujarat youth begin to fill Indian armed forces rank

MEHSANA: If Gujarat has become a happy hunting ground for the Indian armed forces of late, the state authorities should not be complaining. Realization of Gujarat's strategic importance has made the security forces to expand their frontiers to the desert and the coastline of Gujarat where they have been holding regular land, sea and air warfare exercises for the past one decade.
These developments have another aspect to them. The Indian armed forces have been holding frequent recruitment melas in the state and getting good response too. Notably, the district authorities and the Department of Employment and Training have been extending all possible help to the Indian armed forces in organizing the rallies to ensure that maximum youths from the state get employment. In fact, the state government this time gave free state transport bus passes to pre-scrutinised candidates who took part in Mehsana rally, S.R. Vijayvargiya, district employment officer, Anand, said. For the first time, the candidates had a comfortable night stay and were provided with hot meals and butter milk. Such pro-active measures by the state government has helped about 5000 youths from Gujarat join the Indian Navy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army and Indian Coast Guard in the past five years.
The Army Recruitment Office, Ahmedabad had held a recruitment rally from July 20 to 27 in Mehsana. At least 36,000 youths from 18 districts of north, central and south Gujarat and the Union Territorties of Daman and Dadra and Nagar Haveli attended it.
"We received an unprecedented response to the rally which was held to recruit soldier general duty, soldier technical (aviation), soldier technical (nursing assistant), soldier technical and soldier clerk," Colonel VV Chavan, director recruiting, ARO, Ahmedabad, said.
"This was a record turnout of candidates and there was an overall increase of 25 per cent in the participation," he said, refusing to give any more details with regard to the vacancies etc.
Brigadier Manohar Thomas, headquarters recruiting zone, Pune said the response to technical categories from Gujarat was still on the lower side and hoped there will be a change in the trend in future.