Ajit Doval - Rustamji Memorial Lecture 2024 full Text

 Ajit Doval - Rustamji Memorial Lecture 2024 full Text 

Can CRPF & BSF perform each others’ duties? NSA Ajit Doval explores idea of ‘interoperability’

‘Vulnerable’ borders stand in the way of India’s economic growth, says NSA Doval at a BSF event, adding that without border security, it's impossible to ensure internal security.

Mayank Kumar

24 May, 2024 10:48 pm IST

NSA Ajit Doval at the BSF investiture ceremony | ANI

New Delhi: Calling the vulnerability of India’s international borders one of the challenges in the path of the country’s future economic prosperity, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval Friday pitched the idea of integrating the Central Police Organisations (CPOs) to ensure that different forces achieve “interoperability” to bring about “homogeneity” in their actions.

Discussing the idea, Doval explored the possibility of mobilising the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which now has the mandate to maintain law and order in states, for anti-naxal operations along the border at times and in places where the Border Security Force (BSF) has the mandate of functioning. Similarly, he explored if the BSF could, at times, be used to deal with challenges to internal security.

Saying that other sectors are seeing this kind of integration, he said CPOs could achieve it because of similar training, equipment and command structures. He, however, prefixed a caveat, saying he was “speaking as an IPS officer and not as an NSA of India.”

Delivering the annual Rustamji Memorial Lecture, held Friday in memory of the first Director General of the Border Security Force, K.F. Rustamji, on the occasion of the BSF’s 21st Investiture Ceremony, Doval said India’s economic growth would have been more rapid and smooth had it not faced adversarial positions on the northern and western borders.

“The weight of border vulnerability was always on internal security — in terms of terrorism, radical ideas, and thoughts that come, drug trafficking, arms smuggling, human trafficking, organised crimes. You name, and we find that. Because of adversarial relations, we find it difficult to manage these situations, or it has become a liability for our internal security,” NSA Doval said during his nearly half-an-hour lecture.

Further emphasising the importance of border security, NSA Doval said that while defining the limit of a nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, it is also essential for maintaining internal security. “Unless our borders are secure, our internal security is not under control,” he said.