Tezpur, March 14: Tezpur MP R.P. Sharma has written to Union minister of state for home affairs Kiren Rijiju, urging him to cancel the proposal to shift the Sashashtra Seema Bal (SSB) training centre here to Uttarakhand.

The SSB director-general had issued an order to shift the training centre to Uttarakhand on the basis of a directive from the Union home ministry.

Sharma said in his letter that the ministry had not mentioned why it was being shifted to a 25- bigha (eight acres) plot, which was too small to accommodate it.

The SSB centralised training centre was set up on a 142-acre (around 500 bighas) plot at Devendra Nagar in Salonibari, 18km from this town, on Balipara road in Sonitpur district on December 1, 1965.

Two other establishments - CSD & workshop and the composite hospital - are located in the campus. It initially came into existence during World War II when it was used as a camping ground for Allied troops. However, after the Chinese aggression in 1962, the campus was used by various Indian Reserve Police battalions, which were deployed in forwarded posts in border areas of Arunachal Pradesh.

Sharma said in November 2015, the SSB frontier headquarters was opened in the campus.

Various organisations like the Tezpur unit of Asam Sahitya Sabha, Bodo Sahitya Sabha, All Assam Students' Union and the Goroimari Nagarik Mancha have strongly opposed the move to shift the SSB centre and urged the ministry to stop the move.

The secretary of the AASU's Sonitpur unit, Nitul Bora, appealed to the authorities not to shift the centre. "We will launch an agitation against the decision," he said.

An SSB official also lamented the home ministry's decision, saying it is not only an armed force but also imparts training to the people for the benefit of society.