NEW DELHI, July 23: The Government has decided to immediately raise 20 battalions of the Assam Rifles and another 12 of the Rashtriya Rifles to ease the load on the Army in combating insurgency in J-K and the North-East, and to enable it to man the country's borders more effectively.Sources said that in the wake of the Kargil crisis, it has been decided that the Army should be taken off anti-insurgency operations as far as possible so that it could concentrate on guarding the borders and maintaining its operational preparedness.As a follow-up to national security assessment in the post-Kargil scenario, counter-insurgency operations will be undertaken now mainly by the Rashtriya Rifles and Assam Rifles, supplemented by other paramilitary forces such as the BSF and CRPF. The Army is to be used only in extreme situations.Before Kargil, the Army was heavily deployed to tackle insurgents in Kashmir and the whole of North-East, causing a depletion of its strength on the borders. While an entire corps,comprising three divisions, was engaged in fighting militants in Kashmir, as many as six divisions were deployed in the North-East to tackle insurgency.The Government has now decided to augment the strength of the Assam Rifles and Rashtriya Rifles with as many as 20 new battalions - roughly 18,000 personnel - to be raised in the former and another 12 battalions in the latter.Both the Assam Rifles and Rashtriya Rifles are paramilitary forces which come under the Union Home Ministry but are under the operational command of the Army where they are deployed. While the Assam Rifles, which has an existing strength of 32 battalions, is mostly deployed in the North-East, the Rashtriya Rifles, a relatively newer force with an existing strength of 12 battalions, has been effectively used in tackling insurgency in J-K and also took part in the Kargil operations.The Director General, Rashtriya Rifles, Lt Gen Avtar Singh, has already been made the security advisor to the J-K Government with regard toanti-insurgency operations. A similar move is planned to make the Director General of the Assam Rifles the permanent security advisor to the insurgency-affected North-Eastern states.Sources said this proposal had been doing the rounds of the North Block for quite sometime but got a fillip after Kargil. The Army has been demanding that its deployment for anti-insurgency operations be kept to the minimum since heavy involvement was blunting its ``operational edge'' as well as causing training and equipment maintenance to suffer.Already, after Kargil, several Army units deployed in anti-insurgency operations in the North-East have had to be moved to Kashmir.
