Home Minister Rajnath Singh's Lok Sabha seat Lucknow gets new NDRF unit

NEW DELHI: Lucknow, the parliamentary constituency of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, is the new base for a special team of NDRF, the central force tasked with undertaking relief and rescue operations during disasters.

The special team consisting of 45 men was recently stationed in the capital of Uttar Pradesh. It is at present operating out of a facility belonging to state Home Guards.

"We were looking for a base to station a team somewhere in the central part of the country to cater to quick deployment requirements of the force in events of disasters or any other such emergencies in these areas.

"We are in touch with the state government and it is expected we will get a permanent location for the team in Lucknow soon," NDRF Director General O P Singh told PTI.

NDRF, which is celebrating its 11th Raising Day today, has 12 battalions and over a dozen such special teams stationed in various parts of the country.

Officials said the idea is to deploy such small teams in select areas and the team in Lucknow will be equipped to tackle chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear (CBRN) emergencies in their area of responsibility in the entire central region.

The smallest team of the force has 45 members, including engineers, technicians, electricians, dog squads and paramedics, and it acts as a self-contained quick reaction unit for search and rescue tasks.

In order to effectively cover all parts of the country, NDRF units in north are based in Bathinda (Punjab) and Greater Noida (UP) near Delhi and in the eastern flank of the country in Guwahati ( Assam), Patna ( Bihar), Mundali (Odisha), Kolkata ( West Bengal) and Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh.

Similarly, in the western part of the country, NDRF battalions are based in Vadodara (Gujarat) and Pune (Maharashtra) and in south, they are located in Vijaywada ( Andhra Pradesh) and Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu.

The only battalion in the central region is based in Varanasi, the Parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

NDRF is a central force tasked to respond swiftly during disasters and has 1,149 personnel in each battalion. It has been raised after inducting the manpower of various paramilitary forces of the country.

It functions under the Union Home Ministry and was raised in 2006.