Territorial Army recruits Mandarin experts for border talks with China

The Territorial Army (TA) is going in for expansion and capability enhancement as it has recruited five Mandarin experts and posted them in forward areas to aid Indian armed forces during border talks with China, which continues to linger in Eastern Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.

The TA, also called as ‘Citizen’s Army’, as it allows volunteer citizens to join the force, is in the process of hiring more women and cyber security experts besides raising another Ecological Task Force battalion to meet recent demands of conservation and rejuvenation of the rivers, Yamuna in the national capital and Gomti in Uttar Pradesh.

The TA, which is going to celebrate its 75th anniversary on Monday, is expected to recoup some of its strength lost after the government decided to disband five of the six railway engineers regiments. As of now there are 60 TA battalions (each having 100 personnel), with 43 ‘non-departmental’ battalions deployed in counter-insurgency duties from Jammu and Kashmir to North-East, 14 ‘departmental’ ones, which means they are attached to ministries like that of environment and forest and petroleum and natural gas and Jal Shakti, and remaining three of engineers.

It is learnt that the TA might get two to three battalions in a lateral shift in addition to raising one more Ecological Battalion to assist the governments in Delhi and UP to address pollution in Yamuna and Gomti, respectively, defence sources informed. Ever since the Ecological Task Force (ETF) was raised in 1982, it’s ten battalions have planted 9 crore trees in 90,000 hectares, and is also part of National Mission for Clean Ganga, pointed defence sources.

Sources in defence establishment stated the five language experts in Mandarin were recruited in August after they cleared the written exams and the interview conducted by the TA to meet the requirements of the regular Indian Army to interpret the Chinese PLA’s conversation at the time of talks on the border. This would add to the existing strength of such language experts within the Army whose numbers have gone up post the Galwan face-off in May 2020. Language schools within the Army are also offering courses in Mandarin for jawans and officers. Beyond that, the Army is using Artificial Intelligence (AI) based solutions to overcome language barriers.

More women officers

The Citizen’s Army is also going to increase the presence of women officers in its battalions other than those deployed in oil sector and railway duties. “Based on the experience of having women officers, a considered proposal was prepared to extend their employment scope further,” defence sources added. From 2019, TA began taking women officers after amending its cadre management provisions to give fillip to government’s move to empower women.

Similarly, the TA is awaiting a go-ahead later this month to recruit at least five cyber security experts to raise an in-house team that can take care of its virtual assets, said defence sources. As a pilot project, the first lot of cyber experts would be taken and if the trial is successful, the TA may hike their numbers, defence sources elaborated.

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