India: NSG commandos to be withdrawn from VIP security

The Union government has ordered the complete withdrawal of the counter-terrorist commando force NSG from VIP security duties and handing over its nine “high-risk” VIPs to the CRPF by the next month, official sources said Wednesday (Oct 16).

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has also sanctioned a fresh battalion of specially trained personnel, recently withdrawn from Parliament security duties, to be attached to the CRPF VIP security wing.

The ‘black cat’ commandos of the National Security Guard (NSG) provide ‘Z plus’ category protection to nine VIPs which include Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, his predecessor and BSP supremo Mayawati, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, veteran BJP leader and former deputy prime minister L K Advani, and Union Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal.

The others include BJP leader and former Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh, former Jammu and Kashmir CM and Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) president Ghulam Nabi Azad, National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

The transfer of duties between the two forces under the MHA is expected to be completed within a month, they said.

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), which has six VIP security battalions, has been asked to absorb a seventh battalion for this purpose.

The fresh battalion is the one that used to guard the Parliament till a few months back. After a security breach that took place last year, the Parliament security was handed over to the CISF from the CRPF, a senior officer told PTI.

As part of the taking over the new task, a team of Andhra Pradesh Police was in Delhi recently for the change of its chief minister’s security from the NSG to the CRPF, the sources said.

Two among these nine VIPs will also have the advanced security liaison (ASL) protocol being undertaken by the CRPF– Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and UP Chief Minister Adityanath, as per the sources.

ASL involves an advance reconnaissance of the location to be visited by the VIP. The CRPF undertakes such a protocol for five of its VIPs including Home Minister Amit Shah, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and three Gandhi family Congress leaders.

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The plan to relieve NSG from VIP security tasks has been in the making since 2012 when NSG commanders foresaw an event where simultaneous terror attacks could be witnessed at one time on multiple centres in the country and the commandos would have to be rushed in different directions.

PTI had reported in January 2020, that after the removal of the SPG (special protection group) from the Gandhi family– Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra– a committee of the MHA had decided to withdraw NSG from VIP security tasks.

The Union government has decided to “restructure” the NSG and use its manpower to raise and station ‘strike teams’ of commandos in some high-risk areas like near the Ram temple in Ayodhya and around some critical assets located in the southern part of the country.

Withdrawal of the NSG from VIP security, once done by November, will happen after over two decades since the ‘black cat’ commandos were drafted in this duty, a task not originally charted for it when the force was conceptualised and raised in 1984.

The NSG is celebrating its 40th raising day on Wednesday.

The Union government is of the view that the NSG should concentrate on its original charter of handling specific tasks of counter-terrorist and counter-hijack operations and that the task of securing high-risk VIPs was proving to be a “burden” on its limited and specialist capabilities.

Around 450 ‘black cat’ commandos are expected to be freed once NSG is withdrawn from VIP security duties, the sources had said.

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