D K Pathak is new BSF chief

NEW DELHI: Government has appointed senior IPS officer D K Pathak as the new Director General of the country’s largest border guarding force BSF.

Pathak, a 1979-batch officer of the Assam-Meghalaya cadre, was till now posted as the Special DG of the 2.5-lakh personnel strong force here and was also officiating as the DG for sometime.

The post of the Border Security Force chief has been vacant for the last one month after Subhash Joshi retired on February 28.

Before coming to BSF, Pathak had served in another paramilitary CRPF as its chief of operations in J&K and he has also spent stints in various positions in his cadre states of Assam and Meghalaya.

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Mamohan Singh recently approved the name of the officer for the post and he is expected to continue till February, 2016 by when he will attain his retirement age.

The BSF guards two of India’s most crucial borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh and it is also deployed extensively for conducting anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh and Odisha besides rendering various tasks in the internal security domain of the country. (AGENCIES)