Dilip Kumar Mekala

For a paramilitary force, which is at war with left wing extremists on a daily basis, the chances of disappointments outnumbering the achievements are usually high. But when the director general of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Dilip Trivedi, addressed the media on November 12, he was determined to prove otherwise. The press conference was a prelude to the Raising Day parade which was to take place the day after, and it was particularly significant for Trivedi, who retired end of November.

Trivedi’s tenure had been a rocky one. His idea of ‘reorganisation and transfer policy’ for the CRPF had been given a cold shoulder by the ministry of home affairs (MHA), and he also received a lot of flak from within the organisation for making such a move without having a broad consensus. However, that did not stop Trivedi from discussing his plans in detail during the press conference. “There are two issues we are planning to address with this - reorganisation and transfer policy,” he said. “First, the policy will bring senior level officers of DIG and IG ranks closer to operational areas. And second, the CRPF is the only organisation which has a dual control; the operations and administration are handled by two people. We thought we will bring these two roles under one person”.

The core reason behind such a policy, according to Trivedi, was the nature of deployment present in the CRPF currently. Unlike other paramilitary and state police forces, which have deployment as per the battalion with a firm bas