Over a year after the deadly Dantewada Maoist ambush, the CRPF has created 70 exclusive battalions for counter insurgency and naxal operations which will be insulated from regular law and order duties performed by the force.
Creation of two distinct units - one for undertaking operations and the other for performing duties like conduct of polls - within the world’s largest paramilitary force was recommended in the aftermath of the attack in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada where 75 armed CRPF men and a state policeman were killed in April last year.
“We have earmarked and created 70 battalions for counter—insurgency tasks. These battalions will never be used for other law and order duties and will follow a strict regime of training, deployment and performing their specific job,” CRPF Director General K. Vijay Kumar said.
One battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has a strength close to 1,000 personnel.
Mr. Kumar, a 1975-batch Tamil Nadu cadre IPS officer, was appointed chief of the three-lakh-personnel force in the aftermath of the Dantewada debacle last year, with a task to re-organise and resurrect the force which was low on motivation.
“These battalions will henceforth serve in our main theatres of operation like anti-naxal, counter-insurgency and duties in Jammu and Kashmir. Although the men in these units can join the other law and order battalions after a certain period of time for de-stressing themselves, the battalions would never move for any other job,” he said.
