Beating Retreat at border may soon see permanent female force

Gaining ground world over, the famous retreat ceremony at the Indo-Pak Joint Check Post of the Attari border may soon see female constables of the Border Security force becoming permanent feature in the parade held every evening.

The female force, which was recruited in the BSF last year was till now restricted to the job of frisking only but with the BSF kicking off the experiment to introduce its female cops in the parade, the BSF eves might soon get a new profile on permanent basis.

And now the BSF has already deployed four female guards and made them part of the ceremony as pilots. The two female guards open the ceremony as the walk through the parade arena and station near the Joint Check post.

The BSF had selected 20 female cops initially and after training them with the parade traits, finally the BSF short listed four out of 20.

DIG BSF, Mohammad Aquil, says, “The idea came to our mind to involve the female force of the BSF into the evening retreat ceremony and for that we firstly selected and trained 20 ladies from the force. And thereafter four were finally short listed.”

At present four are part of the ceremony. But this is being done as an experiment and if the there performance is as per our satisfaction and response from crowd is encouraging then we may stick to it and make the women constables a permanent part of the parade.

Notably, the BSF looked into the height, physical fitness, agility and stamina before selecting the four ladies. Effort was made to select the tallest.

It may be mentioned that the retreat ceremony at the border wherein the BSF guards and Pak Rangers perform parade every evening has become major crowd puller in the past few years as thousands of people turn up for this. And if female force of the BSF too becomes a permanent feature, it will give a new dimension to the parade.

And not only new dimension, it will be for the first time in history that border will se female force as permanent part of the parade.

Determined to make the experiment a success , the women constables could be seen putting every bit of energy and enthusiasm at their command into each step.

Maninder Singh Monga, PTC AIR, AMRITSAR.