New Delhi, Jul 11 (IANS): Opposition members in the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Defence demanded immediate withdrawal the new military recruitment scheme Agnipath at a special meeting on Monday to brief them on the scheme.

Apart from Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the Defence Secretary, the three armed forces chiefs and other senior officials of the Ministry of Defence were present in the meeting.A

Out of total 12 MPs in the meeting, 6 were from opposition parties - Rajni Patil, Shaktisinh Gohil and Manish Tewari of the Congress, Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Saugata Roy of the Trinamool Congress, and A.D. Singh from the Rashtriya Janata Dal.

The opposition MPs voiced their concerns over the new recruitment scheme in the meeting and said it should be rolled back.

As per a source, five of the opposition members also submitted a memorandum against the scheme to the Defence Minister.

The memorandum said that it is not fair for those who have passed the exam to be sent again in this Agnipath recruitment scheme, and instead they should be regularised.

"Number of applications coming in Agneepath scheme is not a proof of the success of the scheme but shows unemployment in the country. It is a failure of the scheme otherwise more people would have come," it underlined.

Along with the memorandum, the opposition MPs asked Singh to hold wider consultations across the country and also to send the Agnipath scheme to the Standing Committee for Defence.

However, despite opposing the scheme, Congress' Manish Tewari didn't sign the memorandum.