 |
| SSB jawans at the first passing out parade held at the Ranidanga sector headquarters. A Telegraph picture |
Siliguri, June 4: The Sashastra Seema Bal is about to beef up security on the India-Nepal border.
“By the end of this year, 20 new border outposts will be set up along the border,” said Harish Chandra Pandey, the deputy inspector-general of the SSB, Ranidanga sector, this morning.
The 22nd battalion of SSB Ranidanga covers 288 km of the border from Sikkim to Bihar. The total number of existing border outposts is 57.
A border outpost is usually manned by 25 jawans, including one sub-inspector.
Last week, SSB jawans and Darjeeling police clashed with thousands of Bhutanese refugees at Panitanki on the India-Nepal border, located around 45 km from Siliguri. The refugees, who live in Nepal, were on their way to Bhutan via India to take part in the second round of mock general elections that were held there on May 28.
“More border outposts will help us deal with such flare-ups better,” an SSB source said. He added that currently the average distance between two border outposts is around 5 km, which will be reduced to 3.5 km once the new units came up.
Today was significant for the Ranidanga sector headquarters, 12 km from Siliguri, as 495 jawans passed out of the training centre there and were commissioned into the paramilitary force.
“This is the first time that the 22nd battalion at the Ranidanga sector has trained jawans,” said S.L. Sarkar, the commandant of the battalion.
The SSB has its full-fledged training centres at Barauni, Srinagar, Gorakhpur, and Sapro. Barasat and Ranidanga are treated as ad-hoc training centres.
The newly commissioned jawans hail from Sikkim, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Over nine months, they went through physical training and learnt judo, computers, use of different weapons and border management.
“They will be posted at different sectors of the SSB,” said Sarkar.
Among the new graduates, Rabindra Kumar won the special award for his overall performance. The other awards went to Md Saiyad Hussain (best shooter), Vinod Kumar (outdoor activities), Karma T. Bhutia (sports) and Rajendra Kumar (drill).