Keen to transform the Army to fight modern warfare, the top echelon of the Army “in principle” has agreed to restructure the Army Headquarters by shifting the Rashtriya Rifles(RR) headquarters from New Delhi to somewhere near Northern Command in Jammu & Kashmir as RR is exclusively engaged in anti-insurgency operations there. 

Similarly, Directorate General of Military Training will now move to Army Training Command (ARTRAC), Shimla from the national capital.  The ARTRAC looks after all the aspects of training and working philosophy and the shifting of Military Training headquarters will help the force to have a more cohesive approach. 

The two proposals including shifting of RR and Military Training Headquarters were firmed up during a day- long meeting on Tuesday here between Army Chief General Bipin Rawat and seven top commanders to review reports of study groups formed to recommend ways to restructure the Army and make it “lean and mean,” officials said here on Wednesday. Explaining the rationale for moving the RR headquarters to Northern Command, which looks after Jammu and Kashmir, they said it will provide faster and more co-ordinated approach to deal with anti-insurgency operations.  Moreover, the headquarters of Assam Rifles, which tackles insurgency in the North-East, are based in Shillong and it makes sense to have the RR offices in Jammu and Kashmir, they said.               

The force was raised in early 1990s to deal with insurgency in the state and now has more than 65 battalions(one battalion has 1,000 men).

These two proposals besides reports on cadre review, increasing the pensionable tenure of jawans, merging the various operational blocks into one vertical for seamless and fast decision making will now come up for detailed review during the Army Commanders’ Conference here next month, they said.