GUWAHATI:
A total of 16,324 new National Cadet Corps (NCC) have been added in border areas covering seven sister states of the Northeast, said Major General Bhaskar Kalita, additional director general (ADG), NCC, Northeastern Region (Shillong) recently.
“Northeast shares borders with China, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Since October 2020, we have added 16,324 new cadets in the organisation. This has raised our strength to 88,000 in the region,” Kalita told media persons from Guwahati, at NCC headquarters in Shillong.
This development also comes in the backdrop of clashes between India and China and troop build-up along the eastern borders and unabated hostilities on the western borders with Pakistan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech in 2020, had pitched for the induction of more NCC cadets within 20 km areas of the international border.
“The Prime Minister talked about the steps being taken to strengthen the NCC in the country in a period when the country is moving forward with new resolutions. For this, a high-level review committee has been set up in the country. In the last two years, 1 lakh new cadets have been created in the border areas of the country,” Gen Kalita said.
Notably, the Northeast has 17 NCC directorates and eight group command offices. Five group command offices are in Assam alone.
“We have cadets in 76 colleges and 144 high schools. We have 88 thousand cadets out of 14.80 lakhs in all 17 directorates of the country,” Gen Kalita also said.
“Of the cadets, 9.62 lakh are boys and 5.18 are girls. The male-female ratio in the Northeast is higher than the national average of 65:35,” the army general said.
The NCC was set up by the British Calcutta in 1917. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose was among 25 cadets of the first batch of NCC in Calcutta University,” the Major General added.
The Indian government after Independence introduced the NCC with 20,000 cadres.
Kalita said that former prime minister Morarji Desai, present prime minister Narendra Modi, former union minister Sushma Swaraj and present union minister VK Singh were also NCC cadets,” he said.
He informed that this year’s Independence Day programme saw the participation of 124 cadets from the Northeast and 70 from Assam.