GUWAHATI: Assam will raise special police commando battalions on the lines of the National Security Guards (NSG) to guard the state’s land at inter-state borders, where frequent attempts of encroachment by miscreants from neighbouring states have been continuing for long.
The commandos will also be deployed at other critical hotspots.
“We want to raise 10 special commando battalions and deploy them in critical areas like the Assam-Nagaland border where there are often law and order situations, at various sensitive areas in Tinsukia district, the Bodoland Territorial Region and hills districts where we need to have presence of our police force,” chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said after chairing the first conference with SPs of all districts at Kaziranga on Wednesday.
Referring to the Assam-Nagaland border, which is the most troblec area, Sarma said, “The boundary is there where it was.
The Supreme Court has ordered status quo on the boundaries of the two states.
There is no border problem but border violations and we will handle that.” He said, “These special commando battalions will be trained at such level which can be compared with NSG.
The intake will be phase-wise and proportionate to the training capacity available in the country.
We will get in touch with all the state police academies and train the recruits so that the 10 battalions can be raised as soon as possible.” The recruitment for the 10 battalions will be part of the one lakh government jobs that BJP had promised during the assembly election campaign.
On May 27, unidentified Naga miscreants had opened fire at Assam Congress legislator from Mariani Rupjyoti Kurmi at Dissoi Valley forest reserve in the Mariani area along the Assam-Nagaland border in Jorhat district.
Kurmi and his team escaped unhurt.
They were going to the area to inspect the encroachment by miscreants from across the inter-state border.
The 512-km border between Assam and Nagaland, where the border dispute is the oldest and most violent, is guarded by CRPF as a ‘neutral force.’ In 1979, more than 50 people from Assam were killed when people from Nagaland raided Chungajan, Uriamghat and Mikirbheta in Golaghat district.
Six years later, in a similar attack on Merapani, also in Golaghat district, 40 people, including 28 Assam Police personnel, were killed.
Similarly, frequent flare-ups occur in the other border areas between Assam and Meghalaya, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and Assam and Mizoram.