NEW DELHI: The government is working on a proposal to transform various paramilitary forces into leaner and compact fighting units by undertaking steps like merging and rotating older troops amongst them, officials said.
They said a special committee of senior Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) officers and Union Home Ministry brass has been constituted to deliberate on the issue and present a final report to the ministry by the middle of this year.
One of the proposals that is being discussed by the committee of the Directors General (DsG) and Special Secretary (internal security) in the Ministry of Home Affairs is to merge some forces to make them leaner, fighting fit and task-oriented for a specific border guarding role or a specialised counter-terrorist task.
It is being discussed if the two border guarding forces, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and the Sashastra Seema Bal, could be merged to create a uniform unit to guard the entire eastern land border along countries like China and Nepal, an official said.
Discussions have taken place but merits needed to be analysed before going ahead with the merger as against the post Kargil war policy decision to have ‘one force for one border’, another official said.
Another proposal being discussed is the merging of country’s largest paramilitary force CRPF with the counter-terror commandos force, NSG. The forces are different from each other but the discussion is
to possibly have a single command for the forces, officials said.
Acquiring new tech
All the CAPFs comprising of the CRPF, BSF, ITBP, CISF and SSB apart from the National Security Guard (NSG) have been asked by the MHA to look for and induct modern technology and gadgetry to perform their duties
(With PTI inputs)