First the episode of Tej Bahadur Yadav, the jawan whom the Border Security Force (BSF), fired after he made a video of poor quality food given to jawans public and now the escalating tension with Pakistan. But the worries for BSF don't end there with majority of the candidates getting selected for higher ranks refusing to join the posts.

AFP

Also Read: Tej Bahadur Yadav, Who Was Dismissed From The BSF, Urges Us To Show Our Support for The Troops In Latest Video

Almost 60 percent of officers selected for the posting in the BSF have refused to join this year.

Twenty-eight candidates who qualified the 2015 UPSC examination for assistant commandants had got BSF as service to join, but 16 of them refused to join despite the risk of being barred from appearing for paramilitary post exams ever again.

In the previous batch selected for BSF in 2016, out of the exam that held in 2014, only 17 out of 31 candidates had joined the training.

The same year, those who appeared for the 2013 UPSC exams also joined the force. But only 69 of the 110 selected officers joined and of these, 15 resigned during training.

AFP

BSF currently has a vacancy of 522 gazetted officers (Assistant Commandant and above) against a sanctioned strength of 5,309, according to the Home Ministry.

A majority of the candidates who appear for Assistant Commandant exam prefer CISF, the most because it doesn’t work in conflict zones. Both BSF and CRPF which serve on border and Left Wing Extremism areas respectively see the majority of the selected candidates refusing to go on training.

Vivek Minz, one of the selected officers who didn’t join, said: “I didn’t get what I wanted. My first option was CISF but my rank was poor so got BSF. Had I qualified for CISF, I would have joined. I was prepared for it.” Minz was quoted in The Indian Express.

AFP

“CISF would have given me metro or city posting and I would have continued to prepare for the civil services exams. This is the only force which has not veered away from its core mandate. All other forces, be it BSF, CRPF and ITBP, would have been problematic,” said Minz, who is from Jharkhand.