10 years on,women NSGs set for ops

Till now,the commandos protected only BSP chief Mayawati. Besides her,NSG had offered their protection to Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa as well; Mayawati,despite initial reluctance,agreed to have six women commandos in her security detail,Jayalalithaa is still to be convinced.

Some time ago,the Home Ministry asked the NSG to also protect Akhilesh Yadav and Raman Singh,chief ministers,respectively,of UP and Chhattisgarh. An ideal security cordon is a mix of both men and women commandos. They are trained enough to face any kind of situation, said Major General Moni Chandi,IG,Training Centre,NSG.

The commandos in the unit are all below 30 years of age and some of them have children. I have a three-year-old son but that has not come in the way of my training or performance. Every three months we have to go for physical tests where we have to meet all health parameters and cannot even afford to gain weight. There are some who have been sent back to their parent cadre as they could not meet the health standards, said one of the commandos.

The commandos trainers claim some of them have exceptionally good firing skills.

Firing is the only area where there is no discrimination between a male and a female commando. In other areas like physical proficiency there is a proportional reduction but here parameters are same for both and the women have turned out to be better, said Chandi.