The Centre is all set to accord sanction for creation of eight new battalions to the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force (ITBP) for deployment in Arunachal Pradesh frontier in order to plug the operational gaps in the area.
The long-pending demand of the paramilitary was cleared by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh following a recent meeting between him and ITBP Director General Krishna Chaudhary. During his meeting with Singh, Chaudhary is learnt to have cogently presented the rationale behind additional manpower in the sensitive frontier, sources in the Union Home Ministry said.
Chaudhary also underscored during the meeting the need to have a reserve component within the paramilitary for soft postings of the personnel as the ITBP is presently deployed cent per cent in difficult areas, mostly at high altitude locations over an average 12,000 feet above sea level or in the Naxal-affected areas. The paramilitary is expecting that another eight battalions will be sanctioned to create the required reserve battalions for postings of the personnel in soft duties in about a year.
As many as 12 battalions are already deployed in the Arunachal frontier but major gaps still exist due to difficult terrain and a single patrol takes at least 25 days in certain patches, officials said. The additional eight battalions will man newly-created 54 border outposts (BOPs) and 72 staging points under two sector headquarters of the Arunachal Pradesh frontier.
Distance between certain border outposts in the frontier and that between the peaks in the area is to the tune of 100 km where effective patrolling is often difficult due to lack of requisite manpower. The additional battalions will help ease the stress of the personnel already deployed there.
Out of the total 163 BOPs in the frontier, about 80 are located above 12,000 feet. The highest border outpost at 18,700 ft in Sikkim and the lowest at 3,500 ft are located in the Arunachal frontier. The ITBP had replaced the Assam Rifles in the Arunachal Pradesh frontier in January 2005.
Apart from securing the high altitude BOPs, the paramilitary has also been deployed in the Naxal theatre. The concept of “one border, one force” evolved after the Kargil war was tweaked during the erstwhile UPA regime, leading the paramilitary to be further stretched into continuous deployment in difficult areas.