The Hindu : National : More funds for Central police forces

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 09, 2004

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National

More funds for Central police forces

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JULY 8. The Manmohan Singh Government's maiden budget today proposed a substantial hike in the budget allocations for the Central police forces. The total allocation for the Central police organisations has gone up from Rs. 9,260.48 crores to Rs. 10,756.89 crores, an increase of about 15 per cent.

Knowledgeable sources in the police organisations said that a major portion of the increase would go towards meeting the salaries and administrative expenses of the new battalions being raised by the paramilitary forces. However, most of the proposed increases were also mooted by the previous Vajpayee Government in February. For instance, the allocations proposed by the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, for the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) as well as Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) remain exactly the same as that proposed by his predecessor, Jaswant Singh.

In this year's proposals, the lion's share has gone to the Border Security Force (BSF) which gets a massive hike of about Rs. 400 crores. As against the budget allocation of Rs. 2,518.52 crores in 2003-04, the BSF gets Rs. 2,957.79 crores this time. Apart from its normal deployment for keeping vigil along the actual line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, the India-Pakistan border in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat, India-Bangladesh and India-Myanmar borders, the BSF assists the local administration in the maintenance of law and order.

The Central Reserve Police Force, mandated to perform various internal security duties and render assistance at the time of natural calamities, gets an allocation of Rs. 2,330.53 crores in this year's budget proposals compared to Rs. 1,918.08 crores in the last budget.

The specialised force for combating terrorism in all forms, the federal force of the National Security Guard (NSG) gets a hike of about Rs. 25 crores in the allocations. From an allocation of Rs. 100.78 crores, the elite NSG is set to get Rs. 125.28 crores in the 2004-05 budget proposals.

The oldest paramilitary force in the country, Assam Rifles which operates in North-East under the operational control of the Army, has been allocated Rs. 839.82 crores, up by about Rs. 90 crores from Rs. 749.76 given to it in the last budget.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), set up for policing the India-Tibetan border in Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, has been allocated Rs. 534.26 crores, up by Rs. 93 crores. The allocation for the Delhi Police has gone up from Rs. 899.50 crores to Rs. 964.36 crores.

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