Senior IPS officer Vivek Kumar Johri on Saturday took charge as the director-general of the BSF, the largest of the paramilitary forces manning the country’s border.

Johri was earlier posted as special secretary in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external spy agency, under the cabinet secretariat.

Sources said this was the first time an intelligence officer had been appointed to helm a paramilitary force.

“Johri’s stint as DG BSF will be very significant considering that BSF personnel are posted in Jammu and Kashmir, which is under lockdown in the aftermath of the scrapping of the state’s special status,” a Union home ministry official said.

Security agencies, the official said, were concerned about the frequent infiltration by Pakistani terrorists into Kashmir and also cross-border smuggling of drugs.

“Drugs from Pakistan are used to fund terror activities and it is expected that Johri’s experience in RAW will help counter both infiltration and narco- terrorism,” the official said.

The appointments committee of the cabinet, which is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has Union home minister Amit Shah among its members, appointed Johri, a 1984-batch officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, as the new BSF DG last month.

An engineering graduate from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, Johri had also served in the CBI. He took charge from outgoing BSF DG Rajni Kant Mishra at the force’s headquarters on Lodhi Road.

Johri will retire in September next year and is the 25th chief of the BSF, which was raised in 1965.

With a strength of over 2.65 lakh personnel, the BSF is tasked with securing two of India’s most important borders — with Pakistan and Bangladesh — besides rendering a variety of duties related to internal security.