Three battalions of the BSF comprising more than 3,000 personnel will move across the border from Odisha to Chhattisgarh and an equal number of ITBP units will further move into the Naxal stronghold of Abujhmad as part of a strategy to intensify anti-Maoist operations in their last bastions, official sources said.
The new operational blueprint is part of a plan under which Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently made a declaration that India was “on the verge of” eliminating Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
“The last strike against LWE by forces such as the BSF, the CRPF and the ITBP is in the process. We are determined to end Naxalism in the country,” Shah said on December 1 in Hazaribag, Jharkhand while addressing BSF troops on their 59th raising day.
Sources in the security establishment said that the Border Security Force (BSF) has been directed to create six new COBs or company operating bases in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district by initially moving one of its battalions based in Odisha’s Malkangiri, just across the inter-state border.
A BSF battalion has a strength of over 1,000 personnel.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which currently has about eight battalions located in Narayanpur, Rajnandgaon and Kondagaon districts of Chhattisgarh, has been asked to move one unit further inside the core area of Abujhmad.
