Guest Column | By Lt Gen. B.S. Pawar (retd)
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Turf Wars
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Guarding the borders with intelligence |
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Dr Bhashyam Kasturi
In 2001, the Group of Ministers (GoM) constituted by the NDA government had before it, the report on Border Management which provided the first comprehensive review of the state of India’s borders and a set of recommendations that sought to coalesce the diverse efforts being made by various agencies to guard India’s international boundaries. This was the report of the Task Force headed by former home secretary, Madhav Godbole. |
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Accepting the recommendations of the Task Force as approved of by the GoM, the Cabinet Committee on Security directed that India’s borders with different countries be managed by a single agency, namely, sought the implementation of the concept of ‘one border, one force’ and creation of a department of border management in the ministry of home affairs. The latter was set up in 2004, but its scope remains limited and insufficient for the needs of effective management of the borders and it does not give primacy to border security. The former has been partly put into effect by assigning each of India’s borders to different Central Para Military Forces (CPMF).
The task force studied various aspects of border management and suggested measures for appropriate force structures and procedures to deal with the entry of narcotics, illegal migrants, terrorists and small arms. It also examined measures to establish closer linkages with the border population to protect them from subversive propaganda to prevent unauthorised settlements and to initiate special developmental programmes.
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