New Delhi: Anish Dayal Singh, the former Director General of the CRPF and a Special Director with the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has been appointed as Deputy National Security Adviser Sunday by the union government.
Singh, a 1988-batch IPS officer from the Manipur cadre, comes at an important time, just months after Operation Sindoor, where India struck at 10 terrorist complexes across Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Pakistan.
Singh retired from service on 31 December 2024, after over 30 years of serving in the IB, followed before being appointed as Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in October 2022.
On 1 January 2024 he was appointed as the DG of CRPF until his retirement at the end of the year. Singh is expected to handle the internal affairs of the country, reporting directly to Ajit Doval, India’s National Security Adviser. He will look after Jammu and Kashmir, Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) and the long-running Northeastern insurgency, according to reports.
Former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) Rajinder Khanna is currently Additional NSA, while former IPS officer T.V. Ravichandran and Ambassador Pavan Kapoor are two serving deputy NSAs.
As the former DG of CRPF, Singh headed the organisation as general elections were planned and held in Jammu and Kashmir last year, while also watching over the first assembly election held in the union territory since the abrogation of Article 370.
In 2024, 290 Left-Wing extremists were “neutralised”, while 1,090 were arrested and a further 881 surrendered, as the union government continues to reduce LWE violence across the areas affected.
According to reports, during Singh’s tenure as the head of the CRPF, the government opened at least three dozen new forward operating bases (FOBs), while at least four new paramilitary battalions were approved to be deployed in Sukma and Bijapur districts of Chhattisgarh.
In October 2024, the CRPF began an eight-year long exercise to realign more than 130 battalions across the country, with a focus on providing quality family time for its troops deployed in hard duty areas.
At least 137 out of a total of over 240 battalions are being realigned over the next eight years, a process that began during Singh’s tenure as a head of the paramilitary force. As the head of the ITBP, Singh was responsible for leading the organisation in-charge of security across the India-China border.
Before heading the ITBP and CRPF, Singh spent a number of years with the IB, eventually becoming a Special Director within the organisation.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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