Senior IPS officer S S Deswal appointed ITBP chief

Senior IPS officer S S Deswal was on Wednesday appointed the chief of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), that guards country's frontier with China, according to an official order.

Deswal, a 1984 batch IPS officer of Haryana cadre, is at present the Director General of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB).

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved Deswal's appointment as the DG, ITBP for a period up to his superannuation on August 31, 2021, the order issued by the Personnel Ministry said.

He has been appointed in place of R K Pachnanda, who superannuated on Wednesday.

The around 90,000-personnel strong force, raised in the aftermath of the 1962 Chinese aggression, works under the command of the Union Home Ministry.

Apart from its primary task of guarding the 3,488-km India-China border, where ITBP troops are deployed at freezing heights of up to 18,700 feet, the paramilitary force is tasked with rendering a variety of duties in the internal security domain, including undertaking anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh.