Wrong. IA has only been withdrawn from Cities. And frankly, how many cities does J&k have?
AFAIK there is no large scale CI operations by Army in urban areas of J&K. Even RR is mostly in the countryside with ops in smaller towns like Shopian when required. The cities are held by CRPF and BSF.
ASPuar wrote:
I am a bit surprised by your post. Let us see, how many personnel there are in the CPO's.
BSF -- 2,12,000
CRPF - 2,32,000
CISF -- 1,45,000
ITBP -- 60,500
SSB -- 85,800
SFF -- 10,000
So lets put it all together (I need a calculator), that comes to 7,45,300!! All in infantry batallions!! Thats FAR more infantrymen than the army has. Note that I havent included RR or AR in this total, since theyre under the army. But the RR has about 60,000 personnel, and the AR, 50,000.
Even if you completely get rid of the AR and the RR, that figure doesnt even add up to HALF the BSF's strength. Tell me. Let us assume that the govt replaces the RR completely with the CPO's. 60000 CPO men deployed in COIN ops.
Now please tell me. That still leaves us with 6,85,300 CPO troopers. Please tell me, do our elections really use SIX LAKH EIGHtY THOUSAND TROOPERS? I wonder how we ever conducted elections earlier?
What are we doing with this enormous manpower? Shouldnt our army be released from COIN duty and allowed to train for war?
According to the MHA, there are 621 CPO batallions (not including AR or RR). 621! Thats a huge number.
The entire Indian ARMY only has about 400 infantry batallions. Should we not be a bit surprised that nevertheless, it is the army that is called upon to do everything, despite the existence of this massive trained force of seven lakh forty five thousand men under the MHA?
Finance has every right to question. It must! And the army should encourage it to question, strongly, why it is being forced to do everything from officering NSG, to fighting in Kashmir, to the north east, whilst the CPO's, at their current size, guard the cities of Kashmir.
ASP, I concur on the Finmin's questioning. They are not necessarily asking "Why do we need the RR?", rather the question is "Why you raised so many CPOs?", perhaps an inter ministry politicking?.
With regards to the numbers raised:
BSF, ITBP and SSB are strictly to protect the borders. Army is
not for protecting the IB or LAC, they are only guarding the LoC and AGPL. I think we all know how unprotected our Bangladesh, Rajasthan and LAC borders are. So in a sense their numbers are justified. Unfortunately these forces are still called for counter insurgency.
SFF is a specliast force which is technically neither a CPMF nor a CPO. It is a force under the Cabinet Secretariat i.e. RAW.
That leaves CISF and CRPF. Both forces are now being expanded to take on additional duties. CRPF is the one that is expected to become the lead agency for CI duties in India. Clearly that is yet to happen. However, CRPF has replaced BSF in many areas of J&K. Not whole of CRPF is armed, we have units like Rapid Action Force which have their own roles.
CPO vs CPMF: AFAIK this was only a jargon used by GoM report to classify BSF, ITBP, SSB vs CRPF, CISF and NSG
But my question is: Should the Army (thru RR, AR and TA proxies) remain in CI? No in theory but Yes practice, because given the scale of threat we face I dont expect the Army to just watch from the sidelines.