What is the current force level of the BSF? How many battalions currently exist within Force?

The Border Security Force (BSF) presently has 192 battalions including three National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) battalions. With its Force Headquarters (HQs) in New Delhi, BSF ORBAT comprises three command HQs, Eastern Command at Kolkata, Western Command at Chandigarh, and Command HQ Special Ops at Raipur. In addition to that, it has 13 Frontier Headquarters and 46 Sector Headquarters. The BSF is the only border guarding force that can boast of its own Water Wing, Air Wing, Artillery Units, Tear Smoke Unit (TSU), Central Workshop and Store (CENWOSTO) and other ancillary units.

In addition, the BSF also has well established set-up of training institutions that cater for equipping field commanders and troops with the necessary strategic and tactical knowledge and wherewithal required to tackle emerging challenges.

How has the training evolved with growing numbers of personnel and changing nature of threats?

Training in the BSF is a continuous and progressive process to ensure that we are always prepared for the dynamically changing security scenario. The importance of maintaining combat worthy troops to deal with any situation on our borders as well as internal security duties like counter Maoist, counter insurgency and counter terrorist operations cannot be over emphasised.

In the BSF, we have basic training for newly recruited constables, subordinate officers and officers. We also have various ‘in-service courses’ and ‘role and situation’ specific training programmes to hone up various skills of our bordermen to their optimum level and enthuse their professional acumen. With the increasing number of personnel in the BSF, training of our troops has been a challenge and to overcome this situation we have over a period of time raised many new training institutions and augmented the training capabilities and infrastructure of the already existing training centres.