Just a few days after the BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav shared his plight on Facebook, other claims have started to come out about the lack of proper facilities and possible discrimination meted out to Central Armed Police Forces personnel.
Earlier this week, video clips complaining about poor food quality had been put up on Tej Bahadur Yadav’s Facebook profile. In the videos, Tej Bahadur said that the government was sending all the necessary supplies but senior officials were siphoning off the funds.
The videos went viral on the social media, after which Home Minister Rajnath Singh ordered an inquiry into the incident. However, BSF claimed that Tej Bahadur was alcoholic and was court marshaled back in 2010 for pointing a gun at an officer. This causes further social media outrage as people felt that this was a cover-up by senior officials at the BSF.
Latest reports suggest that BSF has taken notice of the complaint and has come out with new guidelines regarding food being issued to jawans. Not only that, the Prime Minister’s Office too has sought a report on the whole incident from the Home Ministry.
This whole saga has now put focus on facilities being given to Central Armed Police Forces personnel. A video uploaded on 6th November showing a CRPF constable lamenting about lack of facilities provided to them has now gone viral:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzYw1doJUXM]
In the video, the constable is seen and heard talking about lack of welfare and leaves even after doing all kinds of duties from providing security to individuals, institutions, postings in insurgency areas, election securities among others. The constable laments that they don’t enjoy all the facilities available to the Defence Forces and appeals to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to treat them at par.
It should be noted that Central Armed Police Forces i.e. Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) are police forces and come under the Home Ministry as against the Armed Forces that come under the Defence Ministry.
According to this report, the CRPF jawans too are in the same boat as the BSF when it comes to food provided. The CRPF jawans while battling left wing terrorism in Maoist infested areas sometimes have to be content with just daal-chaawal and aaloo for days altogether. The chief cause for this is regular attacks on their vehicles carrying food supplies and risks in airlifting food to them. In many cases they have to be dependent on local suppliers and villagers and as an added life risk, Maoist sympathizers have been known to poison water sources. Peace postings too are reportedly far and few.
Apart from all this, there have been reports about the hazardous work conditions being faced by Indian Policewomen, such as lack of toilets especially for those who toil outdoors under the sun. The report claims that there have been instances of woman officials choosing not to drink water in order to avoid the ordeal of hunting for a toilet.
Hopefully with these videos going viral, all these issues are looked into by the Home Ministry and respective state governments, because well-being of the police forces is central to our internal security.
