New Delhi, Apr 29 (Agencies): The government on Wednesday decided to sanction two more battalions for the National Disaster Response Force, which was possibly the first foreign rescue team to reach Nepal following last weekend’s earthquake.
To speed up matters, two battalions of the Sashastra Seema Bal, the border guarding force set up in 1963, would be converted into NDRF units. One of these battalions would be based at Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and the other in Arunachal Pradesh.
The decision was cleared at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The NDRF, which has been deployed in Nepal and some Indian states bordering it that were affected by the earthquake, currently has 10 battalions adding up to around 10,000 men.
”The objective of the conversion of these two additional battalions of SSB into NDRF battalions is to provide response to the area of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh during any natural and man-made disaster and to enhance the capability of the existing NDRF battalions,” according to an official release.
”The placement of two NDRF Battalions at Varanasi and Arunachal Pradesh will fill up the vast gap of deployment of the NDRF,” an official release said.
The NDRF, a force raised by bringing on deputation personnel from various paramilitary forces, is the first responder in case of any natural or man-made disasters and its units are deployed in various parts of the country for such emergencies.
Each NDRF battalion has 1,149 personnel and is equipped to rescue people affected by disasters.
At present, the NDRF battalions are based in Guwahati (Assam), Calcutta (West Bengal), Cuttack (Odisha), Vellore (Tamil Nadu), Pune (Maharashtra), Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Bathinda (Punjab), Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh), Patna (Bihar) and Vijaywada (Andhra Pradesh).
Earlier, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetal Border Patrol, Border Security Force and Central Industrial Security Force had earmarked two battalions each for the NDRF. The SSB now joins their ranks.
