Home ministry starts recruiting more women in paramilitary forces to achieve reservation targets

New Delhi: The Home Ministry has started the process of recruiting more women to achieve the target of 33 percent in the two paramilitary forces — the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) — and 15 percent in the Border Security Force (BSF), the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).The 33 percent reservation in constable-level posts in CRPF and CISF and 14-15 percent posts in border guarding forces of BSF, SSB and ITBP will start immediately, a Home Ministry official said.These forces together comprise around nine lakh personnel with only around 20,000 of them being women.[caption id="attachment_3517745" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Representational image. Samir Yasir[/caption]While the CRPF is primarily used for law-and-order duties, CISF personnel are deployed for security of airports, metro networks, vital installations and other government buildings.Women empowerment and safety have been a priority of the government and the move was part of this initiative, the official said. This reservation would be horizontal, it said.The move came following the recommendation of the Committee on Empowerment of Women in its sixth report that there was an urgent need to provide due representation to women in paramilitary forces. The CRPF, considered to be world's largest paramilitary force, are mostly deployed in law-and-order duties, anti-militancy operations in Jammu and Kashmir and anti-Naxal operations. It has just around 6,300 women in its ranks.The government has found that women personnel constitute only a little over nine percent in most of the police forces.On 20 March, 2015, the central government had approved reservation of 33 percent for women horizontally and in each category (SC, ST, OBC and others) in direct recruitment in non-gazetted posts from constable to sub-inspector in the police forces of all Union Territories, including Delhi Police.However, the decision is yet to be implemented fully.