BSF personnel during a parade on the force’s Raising Day in Delhi. (PTI)

New Delhi, Dec. 1: The BSF, which completes 42 years soon, could well be called Ballot Security Force.

The Centre has decided to deploy 168 companies of the Border Security Force for the Gujarat elections along with the CRPF, which usually does poll duty.

BSF personnel were deployed for election duty in Punjab, Manipur and Uttar Pradesh earlier this year, where they were praised as impartial and efficient. But the good performance is proving a bane for the force.

“Election duty is at the cost of training and I do not know how to make up for it,” director-general A.K. Mitra said.

Its experience in Kashmir and in dealing with communal riots makes the BSF a candidate for election duty in Gujarat, sources said.

But training suffers each time the force raised to guard the borders is deployed for internal security, which happens frequently now, such as during the Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan.

This is because the BSF has to spare its training companies, drawn from many of its 152 battalions deployed on the borders with Bangladesh and Pakistan, for internal duty.

“Every battalion has a training company and for deployment, only that one is free. Therefore, when these companies are elsewhere on (internal security) duty, there is obviously no training,” said Mitra.

A BSF company usually has 137 personnel.

In Gujarat, 168 companies of the BSF will be deployed across the state along with about 70 companies of the CRPF.

Confident that it will have no respite from election duty, the force has introduced election laws into the syllabi of officers and non-gazetted personnel.

Officials fear that lack of sustained training will impact performance in the long run.