Jorhat, Dec. 11: A National Cadet Corps academy, the first in the Northeast, is all set to come up in this town with Dispur allocating land and agreeing to fund the construction.
Jorhat deputy commissioner Solanki Vishal Vasant said the district administration has recently handed over a 30- bigha plot at Garmur on the outskirts here to the NCC authorities and the process of setting up the academy is on.
Vishal Vasant said the land was earlier earmarked for Assam's first women's university and groundwork for the same was undertaken but with the state government starting the university at an area belonging to the Assam Agricultural University here under the university's mentorship last year, the Garmur site was given to the NCC.
Deputy group commander of NCC group headquarters, Jorhat, Col Pramod Rawat, told The Telegraph that the academy would be first in the Northeast which will benefit the states and boost NCC activities in the region.
He said having a permanent academy with necessary infrastructure would be useful for imparting training as not only a large number of cadets can be given training during a session but also the problem of shifting materials under the present system for organising training camps could be done away with.
Rawat said under the present system, the eight NCC group headquarters spread across the Northeast (five in Assam) under the Shillong-based NCC directorate, organise several training camps across the year.
He said each group headquarters, supported by their respective battalion headquarters, annually organises about 10 to 12 training sessions within areas under their jurisdiction with about 100 cadets attending each camp. The duration of a camp organised in school/college campuses and sometimes in army cantonments is around 10 days.
Rawat said for this purpose the NCC units have to shift a large quantity of physical training equipment from one place to another and get it installed and arrange for accommodation and lodging of the cadets at the temporary venues.
"A permanent training academy will help overcome these problems. Over 350 cadets could participate in one centralised training session," Rawat said. He added that national integration camps, where cadets from other parts of the country can take part, could be also conducted at the academy.
The deputy director said the process for construction of buildings for lodging, accommodation and other physical training infrastructure (drill ground with multiple obstacles) and a firing range will start soon.
"We are carrying out readjustment according to our requirement from some infrastructure earlier constructed for the women's university," Rawat said.
He said according to the plan, a sports facility having volleyball, basketball and football grounds would be set up in the academy. Col Rawat said a Rs 3-crore proposal was submitted to the Assam sports and youth affairs department last month for setting up the infrastructure.
Commander of the NCC group headquarters, Brig. P.M. Rath, while appreciating the state government for providing the plot for the academy, hoped other northeastern states, too, would come forward for such a purpose. He said the NCC functions in the region with office infrastructure and clerical staff provided and funded by the respective state governments while the training programmes are funded by the Centre. The NCC officers are those of the army, on deputation.
