BSF officer deploys jawans for daughter's wedding, fellow officer defends him

In what is seen by many as a "bizarre" misuse of manpower by senior IPS officer for deploying BSF jawans at a private function - a wedding of daughter, the Director General (DG) KK Sharma has come to defense of the senior officer.

"The event has been blown out of proportion by media." Further stating, Sharma said " that no border personnel was removed from border duty for the task," he told India Today.

He further added, "Chandigarh was an administrative post. Deploying personnel for duties where the officer belonged to BSF, his own function was being organised."

He categorically said this is common tradition in Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) and the armed forces.

Sharma said he saw no problem in using personnel for this duty by mentioning that he along with DG of Haryana and Punjab were attending the wedding and BSF makes arrangement when such senior ranking officers are present.

While there are many who raised questions on blatant misuse of manpower like former BSF officer Sanjiv Krishan Sood, who hit out in a blog post DailyO that the incident "was alarming to note the extent of misuse and the troops were withdrawn from even sensitive areas such as Jammu and Punjab even as the force continues to face acute shortage of boots on the ground."

Several BSF personnel were made to perform a different "duty" along the route leading to a resort near Chandigarh and inside the venue's premises earlier this month.

Sources within MHA however have decided that BSF best alone should handle matters of man-management. Sources said, "BSF has been authorized to deal with matters of deployment," washing hands off the controversy all together.

Another senior officer said, "The jawans are regulating traffic for events. Lot of duties that those in administrative staff do miscellaneous work."

And it is not that the force celebrates marriage of just the officer's daughter, but also the jawan's daughter.