Nearly 150 Gurkhas face losing their jobs in cuts being made to the armed forces. The redundancies are part of the Ministry of Defence plan to reduce service personnel by 1,000 soldiers and 1,600 sailors.
Of the 260 compulsory redundancies to the Army, 140 of them will be Gurkhas. It comes as part of the coalition's efficiency drive to bring the defence budget under control. However, the government was accused of "double standards" after it emerged that front-line Gurkha soldiers are to lose their jobs, whereas other infantry will be protected. Tikendra Dewan, Chairman of the British Gurkha Welfare society, said: "Gurkha soldiers are among the fiercest and most loyal in the army, this is double standards. We are not special but we should be treated the same."
The Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, said that the coalition has little choice but to make these cuts.
"The responsibility for these redundancies lies with the incompetence of the last Labour government, who left a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget," he said. "The tough measures we have taken will bring the budget largely into balance for the first time in a generation."
However, Jim Murphy, Shadow Defence Secretary, made a point of singling out the Gurkha redundancies as regrettable. He said: "The country will be hurt that brave Ghurkhas, championed by David Cameron in opposition, are also being made compulsorily redundant".