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Said BSF Director General U K Bansal: “The challenges
the border men face are tough and many. However,
the BSF over a period of time developed the skills
for undertaking the diverse tasks of border management,
counter-insurgency operations and maintenance
of internal security, besides deployment on security
duties in foreign lands under many UN missions”.
He was addressing the gathering at the 46th Raising
Day of the force.
Guarding 6,623.56 km of sensitive borders, involved
in anti- Maoist operations in two states, security
duties 24/7 in foreign lands, BSF is the largest
force of its kind in the world.
It has its own Air and Water Wings, artillery
units and training institutes.
Till 1965 India’s borders with Pakistan were
manned by the State Armed Police Battalion. Pakistan
attacked Sardar Post, Chhar Bet and Beria Bet
on 9 April, 1965 in Kutch. This exposed the inadequacy
of the State Armed Police to cope with armed aggression
due to which the Government felt the need for
a specialized centrally controlled Border Security
Force, which would be armed and trained to man
the International Border with Pakistan.
As a result of the recommendations of a Committee
of Secretaries, the Border Security Force came
into existence on 1 Dec 1965, and K F Rustamji
was the first chief and founding father.
Home Minister P Chidambaram took the salute at
the ceremony.
While addressing the BSF personnel, Chidambaram
praised the high standard of training and leadership
attained by the force. “We are absolutely aware
of the problems faced by the force. Not a single
day passes without discussing or thinking about
the BSF. Not a single month passes when the government
does not discuss about the forces condition at
the border and what all difficulties they go through.
India is proud of its border guarding force,”
he said.
He announced that 1,528 posts had been sanctioned
for augmenting training capacity, 415 additional
posts for engineering and 825 posts for BSF setup
. The government is also keen to assist the land
acquisition to expand the operational bases of
BSF. The government has also sanctioned a 200-beded-referral
hospital in Greater Noida for the Central Armed
Police Forces personnel and their families, Chidambaran
said.
BSF was deployed in the Naxalaffected district
of Kanker in Chhattisgarh in December 2009- January
2010, and in Koraput and Malkangiri districts
of Orissa in April, 2010. Having carefully assessed
and analysed the problem and drawing upon its
vast experience of successfully fighting terrorism
and insurgency, BSF has adopted a combat and non-combat
strategy in consonance with the government’s policy
of security and development.
During the early stages of deployment, BSF met
with stiff resistance and skirmishes between BSF
and Naxalites were more frequent.
Naxalites used IEDs to inflict maximum causalities
on the force personnel with the aim of demoralizing
and gaining upper hand in the area. After a detailed
planning, effective domination of the area was
achieved. To avoid collateral damage, BSF carried
out surgical anti-Naxal operations by developing
precise intelligence.
It was able to detect 54 unexploded IEDs in 2010,
neutralize 4 and apprehend 229 Naxals and recover
182 arms.
There is now willing cooperation and flow of
information from villagers.
General development of various areas has been
the focus for BSF for the last several years.
This has helped inculcate a sense of security
among the people.
A series of meetings have been held with the
public in remote and inaccessible areas. Despite
initial reluctance and threatening calls given
by Naxalites to the people forbidding them from
taking part in the BSF meetings, people came forward.
The public along with the Force identified education,
health, connectivity, development and social awakening
as some of the issues which needed immediate attention.
BSF has been organizing many civic action programmes
to reach the poor in remote Naxal-affected areas.
These programmes include medical camps, sports
activities, distribution of books to school children
and of radio transistors, TV sets, clothing items
and certain essential commodities to the local
population.
Since induction, BSF has conducted about 60
Civic Action Camps in Chhattisgarh alone and about
70 more in Orissa including medical camps. In
these camps, over 6000 patients have been treated
and provided medicines.
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