CRPF for allowing men to keep families in area of posting

New Delhi: CRPF is working on a new deployment policy under which its officers and jawan, who are fighting against Naxals and militants, will be able to keep their families with them, a move that will help allay stress in hard area postings.

The force has submitted a fresh rotation policy proposal to the Union Home Ministry so that it can effectively move its battalions from hard areas like anti-Naxal operations theatre to regular law and order duties which is expected to allay the stress on the force.

"It is a fact that CRPF with over 80 percent of deployment in active theatres gets lesser share of rest and recuperation compared to other forces," CRPF Director General Prakash Mishra said.

He said that ideally, 50 percent of the men should be rotated from hard areas to soft areas.

"Government is also seized of the matter and we expect that the share of combat stress would be rationalised so that we could have a better rotation policy as well.

"This will act as a great motivation for the jawans as they would also get an opportunity to keep their families with them for some time. At present, our jawans hardly get any opportunity to keep their families with them," Mishra said.

The new plan, according to Mishra, is to rotate about half of a battalion under a Group Centre of the force from a hard duty deployment to a lesser tough location on an annual basis.

In the Central Reserve Police Force, about five battalions are attached to a Group Centre which is equivalent to an operational field formation.

"This will result in some rest for our men and women and we hope the policy will be approved by the Union Home Ministry," Mishra said.

The DG, who has brought some drastic changes for conducting anti-Maoist operations in various states, said the force is also planning to initiate a slew of new stress buster programmes like Yoga and community games.

"We are trying to develop some kind of group workouts and training sessions inside our camps including in hard area postings. This will surely help in addressing the issue of suicides in the force," he said.

CRPF, which is designated as the lead internal security force of the country, has bore the brunt of continuous deployment in active areas and hence some rest and recuperation is of utmost concern to it.

"The heavy deployment of the force in active theatres also results in maximum kills. We have eliminated 780 Maoists during the last 15 years. However, this has come at the cost of martyrdom of 566 brave force personnel who laid down their lives battling the biggest internal security threat to the nation (Naxal violence)," he said.