India has moved to raise six new battalions of Border Security Force (BSF), the primary Border Guarding Force of the country, comprising around 7,000 troops.
The government of the country came up with the sanctions to strengthen its capacity to stop smuggling goods, firearms and drugs along the India-Bangladesh border.
The Ministry of Home Affairs of India also sanctioned an amount of Rs 2,090.94 crore to the force. T
he new battalions will also be deployed along the clash prone India-Pakistan border, reports Economic Times.
The troops will be recruited fresh by the force, to be deployed as part of the six battalions. They will be on the ground in over a year’s time, the sources said.
Each BSF battalion has over 1,000 jawans and officers.
The home ministry, the sources said, had on 19 January approved the proposal of the force to raise these fresh battalions and asked the BSF headquarters here to quickly initiate the process of operationalising them.
Four battalions, as per the order, will be raised as part of the forces’ task of guarding eight Integrated Check Posts (ICPs) along Pakistan and Bangladesh, while the rest two will supplement the working units on the ground and help in the replacement of the tired troops.
The BSF had last year projected for enhancement of its manpower, from the about 2.5-lakh personnel, by sanctioning of new units so that they could be deployed in the Assam and West Bengal flanks of the 4,096-kilometres-long India-Bangla border to better check smuggling, infiltration and other cross-border crimes.
The border guarding force had wanted a similar addition in numbers to effectively guard the India-Pakistan International Border (IB), especially in Punjab and Jammu regions where it faces frequent instances of unprovoked firing and ceasefire violations from the other side.
The BSF is responsible for providing security to eight ICPs at Attari in Punjab (India-Pakistan border), Petrapole, Chandrabangha and Hili in West Bengal, Dawki (Meghalaya), Akhaura (Tripura), Sutarkhandi (Assam) and Kawarpuchiah (Mizoram) along the Indo-Bangla border.
Sources said the sanction of new battalions to the BSF would also help it better rotate troops from forward locations to comparatively lesser tasked units in the mainland.