Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, the Lok Sabha Parliamentary constituency represented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be a new base for the anti-riot and crowd control Rapid Action Force (RAF).
The RAF personnel don the specialised blue dungaree and the total strength of the Force has been increased from 10 battalions (10,000 personnel) to 15 battalions. The five new battalions of the RAF were sanctioned by the Central Government in January this year and the new bases have now been identified, officials said.
Apart from the temple town of Varanas, the four other new battalions will be based in Jaipur (Rajasthan), Mangalore (Karnataka), Hajipur (Bihar) and Nuh (Haryana). Varanasi will be the fourth base of the RAF in Uttar Pradesh — the three others being in Meerut, Allahabad and Aligarh.
The process for acquiring land for the five new bases is underway and the five battalions, which are already operational, will start functioning from their permanent locations in sometime, the officials said.
Besides Vadodara, Modi won the Lok Sabha constituency from Varanasi in the 2014 general elections. Modi retained the Varanasi constituency and resigned from Vadodara constituency.
Amongst the new bases is Hajipur which is the Parliamentary constituency of Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan. A RAF battalion has a strength of about 1,000 personnel and it is equipped with gadgets and non-lethal weapons like pump action guns, tear smoke grenade launchers and others to enforce security and law and order in case of protests or riot-like situations.
The force is part of the Central Reserve Police Force, the world's largest paramilitary force with over three lakh personnel. It was raised and made fully operational in October 1992 with 10 battalions.
The RAF battalions are based in various parts of the country in order to cut down response time and rush the teams in the shortest possible time to control violent or riotous incidents.
The 10 old RAF battalions are based in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Aligarh, Coimbatore, Jamshedpur, Bhopal and Meerut.