The National Cadet Corps (NCC) was a college and school-based programme for providing military-style training to students in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, under the auspices of the Pakistan Army. It was a component of the

National Guard of Pakistan The National Guard of Pakistan ( ur, ) is a reserve military force and the component of the Pakistan Army that is designed to act as a "second line of defense" in Pakistan. together with the Pakistan Army Reserve, the Frontier Corps and the ...

(a reserve force of the Army), and was similar to the British

Officers' Training Corps The Officers' Training Corps (OTC), more fully called the University Officers' Training Corps (UOTC), are military leadership training units operated by the British Army. Their focus is to develop the leadership abilities of their members whilst ...

and

Army Cadet Force The Army Cadet Force (ACF), generally shortened to Army Cadets, is a national youth organisation sponsored by the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence and the British Army. Along with the Sea Cadet Corps and the Air Training Corps, the ACF mak ...

History

The

Government of Pakistan The Government of Pakistan ( ur, , translit=hakúmat-e pákistán) abbreviated as GoP, is a federal government established by the Constitution of Pakistan as a constituted governing authority of the four provinces, two autonomous territorie ...

formed a committee to prepare the groundwork for establishing a National Cadet Corps in 1947. The government confirmed an intention to raise the Corps in September 1950. The aim was to organise college battalions composed of students, with college staff holding officer positions. Initially it operated only in

West Pakistan West Pakistan ( ur, , translit=Mag̱ẖribī Pākistān, ; bn, পশ্চিম পাকিস্তান, translit=Pôścim Pakistan) was one of the two Provincial exclaves created during the One Unit Scheme in 1955 in Pakistan. It was ...

but by 1952 it was being considered for expansion to

East Pakistan East Pakistan was a Pakistani province established in 1955 by the One Unit Policy, renaming the province as such from East Bengal, which, in modern times, is split between India and Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Myanmar, wi ...

, and had formed junior and senior sections, although a women’s section was not formed. By 1960 the intention was for the Corps to have a strength of 20,000 members. A 1960 commission on education, set up by the government, recommended creating an Army-controlled directorate to organise the Corps more effectively. It also recommended separate sections men’s and women’s sections for each of the three military services. Although the 1962 East Pakistan Annual indicated that funding had been made available for a Corps there, it is unclear whether the proposed expansion to East Pakistan was implemented because a national budget for 1964 referred to the "West Pakistan National Cadet Corps Scheme". It was officially merged into the National Guard when that force was expanded in 1972 in response to the secession of East Pakistan as the independent country of

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

in 1971. The recruitment criteria in 1973 were for male college students and staff in good health, who would be subject to military law while they were part of the Corps. The training included annual military-style camps and one of the benefits of successfully completing the training was preferential treatment for government jobs. By 1977 the Corps was operational in most degree colleges in the country. The Corps was disbanded in 2002 by President

Pervez Musharraf General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of t ...

, although the government was reportedly considering restarting it in the aftermath of the

2014 Peshawar school massacre On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The militants, all of whom were foreign nationals, compr ...

. There were calls for the Corps to be restored at a federal level in 2015, and at provincial level in 2019.

References

{{Pakistan National Guard National Guard of Pakistan Youth organisations based in Pakistan Military education and training in Pakistan 1948 establishments in Pakistan 2000s disestablishments in Pakistan

History

See also

References