Two days after 25 CRPF personnel were killed in a naxal attack, the government today appointed senior IPS officer Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar as the head of the paramilitary force, filling the post which was lying vacant for almost two months.
Bhatnagar, a 1983-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, is currently serving as the Director General of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB).
He will head the 3-lakh strong paramilitary force for 32 months as he will retire in December 2019.
The post was lying vacant since K Durga Prasad retired on February 28 and the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued the orders two days after CRPF lost 25 personnel in a deadly naxal attack in Sukma in Chhattisgarh.
Bhatnagar is expected to take charge of the CRPF later this week as he is on an official assignment in Indonesia in the capacity of NCB DG.
Fine-tuning anti-naxal operations and getting better results out of them will be the foremost challenge for Bhatnagar apart from enhancing the operational efficacy of the paramilitary in Jammu and Kashmir, where it is deployed in law and order and counter-insurgency tasks.
In an another decision, the ACC appointed Bhatnagar's batch-mate R K Pachnanda as the DG of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force, a paramilitary force primarily tasked to guard the Sino-India border.
Pachnanda is a 1983-batch IPS officer of the West Bengal cadre and is present serving as the DG of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).
He, however, will take over the 80,000 personnel strong ITBP on July 1 after current DG Krishna Chaudhary retires on June 30.
Pachnanda will retire in October 2018.
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