Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to attend the 59th Raising Day parade of Border Security Force to be held in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh on December 1, a senior BSF official said on Tuesday.
The programme is being organised for the first time at Hazaribag where the oldest training centre of the force is located, BSF IG (Training Centre & School) T S Banyal told a press conference here.
The BSF’s Raising Day programme was earlier held in New Delhi only but the practice has been changed in recent years. After conducting the first event outside the national capital at Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer in 2021, the force held it at Amritsar in Punjab the next year.
"The name of the chief guest of the Raising Day will be announced on November 30 by the Director General of BSF. However, Union Home Minister Amit Shah is likely to grace the occasion as the chief guest," Banyal said.
The BSF top brass thinks that such key functions should not only be confined to Delhi but also at the border guards’ prestigious centres in various parts of the country. Local people should be acquainted with BSF as the front-line warriors on the borders of Pakistan on the Western side and Bangladesh on the eastern side, he said.
This year, the function will be organised at Rani Jhansi Parade Ground at the BSF’s Meru Centre, 10 km from Hazaribag town.
Banyal said 1,000 soldiers including officials from all 11 frontiers will participate in the Raising Day function in Hazaribagh.
After the Indo-Pakistan war in 1965, the government felt that a strong central para-military organisation should be raised as frontline warriors on the borders and the BSF came into existence December 1, 1965. Its first training centre was set up at Hazaribag, which was shifted to Meru on March 25, 1967.
-With PTI Input
