NSG gets a temporary refuge: Salt Lake stadium dormitory

This was decided at April 24 meeting between NSG Director General N B Aulakh and state home secretary Ardhendu Sen.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has agreed to give a 25-acre plot for setting up the permanent NSG unit at Badu. The Ministry of Civil Aviation will hand over the plot to the Home Ministry soon and the NSG will start setting up the hub by using prefabricated structures.

The state government was under immense pressure from the Centre to quickly allot place for setting up of NSG hub. During the April 24 meeting,sources said that Aulakh had asked Sen to provide a place where 300 jawans and a dozen officers could be accommodated without delay.

The state home secretary then immediately called state Sports Secretary R P S Kahlon and asked him whether he could provide the dormitory of the stadium to the NSG. “We have no problem in allotting the dormitory which has a capacity of 700 seats and they want only 300 seats. In addition to that we will get paid for it at the rate of Rs 45 per seat. One of their officers in the rank of major is going to visit there in a few days,” Kahlon told

The Indian Express.

This comes at the end of a frantic search for land for a site for NSG following the Centre’s decision of setting up a NSG hub in four metropolitan cities after Mumbai terror attack on November 26 last year.

In January this year an NSG team came to Kolkata and they were shown two plots — both measuring about 1200 acres — at Panagarh in Burdwan district and Kalaikunda at West Midnapore district. But as the NSG was not happy with those plots,in February another team led by the then NSG DG,J K Dutt,came. They were shown two other plots,the 1,000-acre plot at Barrackpore for setting up training centre and another at Kaikhali near Dum Dum airport for house a small NSG contingent.

But since some procedural problems cropped up regarding the Kaikhali land,the government finally arranged the Badu land for the small unit. So far as the training centre at Barrackpore was concerned no final decision has been taken so far.