CRPF to take 21 Army camps in Kathua and Udhampur

The Central Reserve Police Force is taking over 21 Army camps in Jammu division, 15 in Kathua and six in Udhampur, under an internal order that assigns the sites to Commando Battalion for Resolute Action companies. The move is the most concrete step yet in a plan, circulated last August, for CRPF to assume counter-insurgency and counter-terror work that the Army and Rashtriya Rifles have held in parts of the Union Territory. Jammu zone officers briefed the Special Director General who heads the J and K Zone on the hand-over.

Kathua and Udhampur sit on infiltration routes. The Army has treated both as sensitive for years. CRPF already keeps close to two dozen CoBRA companies in the Jammu division at any one time. The new order adds fresh induction: 18 CoBRA companies in the long-term plan, and nine CoBRA teams named in the first wave of camp takeovers. Three regular CRPF battalions, the 24th, 121st and 187th, are being given the 21 sites while the commando teams cover the forested ground between them.

CoBRA was raised in 2008 for Left Wing Extremism. A dedicated battalion for Jammu and Kashmir was announced in April 2025, the force's first such unit for the UT. Jungle tactics travel. So do the gaps. An Army camp is a logistics node: ammunition, casualty evacuation, local intelligence tied to a brigade. CRPF will inherit the ground and have to rebuild those pipes. Force levels at each of the 21 locations are still being counted. Officers call the sites hyper sensitive and say they were chosen first because the plan already ranked them.

The policy argument is old. Internal security, the home ministry line runs, should sit with central armed police as the Army thins out of hinterland grids. The operational argument is newer. Ambush reviews from the Rajouri-Poonch belt between 2000 and 2023 produced a revised SOP last year and put two CoBRA battalions into that discussion. Kathua-Udhampur is the next grid on that map. Dense forest, short borders with Punjab and Himachal, and a history of groups slipping off the LoC into the Jammu plains make the belt a test of whether police commandos can hold ground the Army used to hold.

Nothing in the order says the Army is leaving the LoC. It says 21 camps in two districts change hands. That is a smaller sentence than CRPF takes Jammu. It is still a change in who answers the first shot on those roads. Local police remain the third force in the same space. Coordination among Army columns, CoBRA teams and district police is the piece that fails first when a camp changes its signboard.

CRPF's J and K Zone will own the timeline. The IG in Jammu has already put the de-induction and induction numbers on paper. Very soon is the phrase officers used this week. Battalions need to move kitchens, magazines and communications before a camp is actually theirs. Until that work finishes, the 21 sites are in transition, which is the most dangerous label a camp can wear.

For residents of Kathua and Udhampur the visible change will be the uniform at the gate and the pattern of area domination patrols. For the Army the change is a chance to pull troops toward the fence. For CRPF it is a promotion and a risk. CoBRA's record in Bastar does not automatically copy onto the Shivaliks. The 21 camps will show whether the copy works.

The order exists. The battalions are named. The districts are named. What is not yet public is the date each gate changes hands. That date, when it comes, is the one to mark. Everything before it is preparation. Everything after it is whether the new landlord can keep the same ground quiet.