NEW DELHI: Former Indian Minister of State for defense, Arun Singh has firmly opposed the deployment of the army for internal security duty and instead suggested the setting up of a federal guard to act as a “second intervention force.”

Stating that paramilitary forces like the central reserve police force (CRPF) were not in a position to deal with major law and order disruptions, Singh said the federal guard should be patterned on and Officered by the army and equipped as light infantry divisions minus armour and artillery, but with scaled down engineers, eme and signal support.

‘Whiting in the latest issue of the prestigious united service institution magazine, Singh said to begin raised under the defense ministry with one unit for each region.

In his article entitled, “reorganization of central forces,” the former defense minister suggested complete revamping of these forces including disbanding of outfits like the ITBP and Assam rifles and amalgamating some of their units as scout units of the army, with the rest being merged with the border security forces (BSF).

Singh said it was time that the army was withdrawn from the coin (counter insurgency) operations in the north east. The force well equipped to replace the army there would be the Assam rifles which should be completely transformed.

The former defense minister said while the units of the Assam rifles doing border guard duties should be merged as scouts units of the army, the rest should be completely remodeled and shaped into a counter insurgency force squarely under the ministry of home affairs.

The present force, though under the home ministry, was a hotch potch being officered mostly by army-men on deputation, he said.

Singh has suggested that all the country’s borders with Pakistan, Nepal, Burma, Bhutan and Bangladesh be policed by the border security force. As for the Tibetan border in the central highlands, he says the Indo Tibetan border police ITBP could be turned into scout units of the army for forward screening.

He said the ITBP in its present form suffered from one big handicap — that of lack of rotation, with the result that the personnel were being asked to spend most of their active life at relatively high altitudes in inhospitable terrain with the resultant impact on morale and efficiency as they aged.

The former defense minister said if this did not suit the government, there could be an alternative solution inters battalion transfer between the BSF and the ITBP.

Asserting that terrorism was posing a command and control nightmare to numerous central agencies Arun Singh said a straight-line solution to the problem would be to task the CRPF as the primary force in aid of state police with the national security guard as a specific strike force for special circumstances.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 12, 1990