ITBP gets cadre officer as ADG in rare appointment
New Delhi, August 22
Sanjeev Raina, a 1987-batch ITBP officer, has been appointed Additional Director General (ADG) in the India-China LAC guarding force. He becomes only the second non-IPS officer who has been elevated to this post in the force.
An order issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday said Raina, serving as an Inspector General (IG) at the force's central sector headquartered in Bhopal, is being elevated to the ADG rank apart from another officer, IG Jaspal Singh, for the panel year 2024.
However, Raina, 59, will serve in the new post for just over a month, as he is scheduled to retire next month.
A rank-piping ceremony was held at the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) headquarters on Lodhi Road here on Thursday in the presence of DG Rahul Rasgotra and other senior officers.
Raina has now been posted as the ADG (western command) of the ITBP headquarters in Chandigarh, the order said. The formation looks after the deployment of the force along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, apart from supervising units located in Punjab, Delhi, and Jammu and Kashmir.
Officials said the ITBP was raised in 1962, and it would be the second time a cadre officer has been elevated to the ADG post, the second highest rank in the force.
The ADG post in the ITBP and other Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) is essentially occupied by officers who come on deputation to these organisations from the Indian Police Service (IPS).
A senior officer said, “This appointment also came late as the departmental promotion committee meeting was delayed. Jaspal Singh will be appointed ADG after Raina's retirement and he too will retire in a few months, in December."
Raina, who hails from Kashmir, joined the ITBP in November 1987 and has served tenures in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, and the Northeast. She is credited with setting up the famed counter-insurgency and jungle warfare (CIJW) school of the mountain-warfare-trained force in Mahidanda, Uttarakhand.
Apart from the LAC, the ITBP, with a strength of about 98,000 personnel, is deployed for a number of internal security duties in the country, including the conduct of anti-Naxal operations.
