Bengaluru: There aren’t enough students who would choose to serve in the Indian army, right in the middle of their careers, but six girl cadets weren’t about to let that stop them.
These cadets have etched their names in history books for being the first batch to be inducted in a military school which is a feeder institution for Indian Army.
This is a far cry from the usual cravings of schoolchildren, who aspire to get an admission in a good educational institution and make a fat-salaried career after graduating from it, but they don’t mind.
They are inspired by army generals and officers before they decided to try their luck to be inducted in one of the five Rashtriya Military Schools in India.
“I am inspired by Major Akshay Girish Kumar. He was a martyr of Nagrota army base attack that was carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists post Uri attack in November 2016. His selfless sacrifice had saved the lives of almost 300 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir. This inspired me to do something for the country.
Major Akshay Girish had led 51 Engineer Regiment Quick Reaction Team which came under heavy terrorist fire. The terrorists had taken vantage positions inside two residential buildings that housed families including women, children and unarmed men. He immediately deployed his team to surround the buildings.
Unmindful of his own safety, Major Akshay Girish moved into the building to save trapped families and engaged the hidden terrorist leader in a gunfight at close range.
In the gunfire, he was injured by multiple bullets, and a grenade was thrown at him by terrorists. His body was not recovered till combing operations by Special Forces late in the evening. All trapped women, children and men were saved. Major Akshay Girish was praised for his leadership, indomitable courage and selfless devotion to duty. This incident inspired me, and I opted to quit the routine school and try my luck to join the RMS. I was lucky to have passed the common entrance examination, and I was luckier to get an admission in RMS Bengaluru where Major Akshay Giri passed. This makes my heart bloat with pride,” Cadet Diljan Kaur told UNI in an interaction,” she said.
Kaur is one of the first six cadets who passed out from RMS Bengaluru.
And this could happen because of the policy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that made available two entry points for girl students to join the RMS, otherwise her dream to live a life of Major Akshay Girish would have remained a mirage, she said.
The Modi government had decided to reserve 10 percent seats for girls in Sainik Schools and allow them in RMS. There are two entry levels one is at class 6 and second is at class 9 for class 6, Incharge Education TS Suresh said, adding there are five military schools in India run by the Ministry of Defence.
He said that for the academic year 2022-23, 55,000 applicants appeared for the examination all over India for 300 seats for class 6 in the five five military schools.
“When we got to know that the girl cadets would be allowed to join the RMS, my family decided that I join the school. As my grandfather was from the air force, he always inspired me to join the armed forces,” another cadet from Gujarat Harshi Patel said.
Third cadet from Haryana Varsha Yadav said the day at the school starts early in the morning with physical training followed by breakfast, classes, lunch, games and other activities followed by dinner.
Cadets Gowri Deepa from Andhra Pradesh, Simran Pareda from Odisha said that the milieu at the RMS is very different from the school she studied prior to joining as there was emphasis on all-round development of the cadets.
Sixth candidate Aditi Mehta from Uttar Pradesh, she said that the Sainik school offered them all development both in terms of education and in training them in physical activities. “The training given to the girl cadets was on par with the boy cadets,” she said.
The striking feature of all the six cadets is that their family members belong to armed forces, some of them still serving while others have retired.
