India's mountain-warfare strike force gets first officer to oversee deployments in NE India

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NEW DELHI

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which guards the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China, has posted its first officer to head the newly created Guwahati-based eastern command that oversees the deployment of border battalions in that region.

Additional Director General Amrit Mohan Prasad, posted at the ITBP headquarters here, has been transferred and posted as the ADG of the eastern command, an order issued on Tuesday by the force said.

The command, as per details accessed by PTI, overlooks ITBP battalions posted along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in states like Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Assam with frontiers at Itanagar (northeast) and Lucknow (east) and sector offices at Likabali, Tezpur, Dibrugarh, Gangtok, among others.

The command in Assam’s capital Guwahati also supervises ITBP battalions deployed for anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh.

Some officers, sub-officers and administrative staff were earlier posted by the force to operationalise the command but the posting of the top officer was delayed, official sources said.

The mountain-warfare trained force had similarly posted an officer (Inspector General-rank) in June to head its western command located in Chandigarh that has control over battalions deployed along the LAC in Ladakh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

The ITBP posts at this icy front are at altitudes ranging from 9,000-18,700 feet.

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Earlier, the border deployments of the force were headed by IG-rank officers at various frontier locations.

The new commands will streamline operations, intelligence, deployment and administrative movements of ITBP personnel to the border regions to bring better synergy with the Army that secures the LAC, a senior official had said earlier.

India and China have an ongoing standoff between their militaries in the Ladakh region.

The ITBP, with an estimated manpower of 90,000 personnel, had bolstered its presence all along the 3,488-km-long LAC post these developments.