BSF Museum ready, to open with restart of Beating Retreat ceremony

The ₹3.5 crore, 8,000-square feet BSF Museum, in the spectator gallery on the right side of the Swaran Jayanti Dwar, will also be thrown open for the public with the Retreat ceremony. BSF director general Rakesh Asthana had inaugurated the museum in April

Attari (Amritsar) With the re-opening of the Beating Retreat ceremony for spectators at the Attari-Wagah border expected to be announced soon, a museum depicting the glorious history and evolution of the Border Security Force (BSF) will be another major centre of attraction of tourists.

There are eight galleries in the museum. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

The ₹3.5 crore, 8,000-square feet BSF Museum, in the spectator gallery on the right side of the Swaran Jayanti Dwar, will also be thrown open for the public with the Retreat ceremony. BSF director general (DG) Rakesh Asthana had inaugurated the museum in April.

The fully air-conditioned, state-of-the-art museum can accommodate over 300 people at a time. A combination of silicon and wax has been used in the museum to craft bunkers, battlefields and sculptures of our bravehearts.

There are eight galleries in the museum. The first is the reception desk, where information about the DGs of the force is displayed. The second gallery defines the role of BSF in peacetime and wartime. Two small horizontal LED screens have been installed here that provide detailed information on frontiers that the force mans.

The third gallery is dedicated to the Bangladesh Liberation War with pictures of the 1971 being displayed. The next and fourth gallery is dedicated to give a real like experience of a battlefield in which sculptures of soldiers in uniform with their guns holding mochas and bunkers are displayed. The fifth gallery has a large projector screen in which a documentary about the training of the BSF jawans is shown.

The sixth gallery has pictures and descriptions of our brave-hearts. The seventh gallery is a storehouse of information about gadgets that the BSF uses. The other part of the gallery is for entertainment of visitors; it can be used for clicking pictures with backgrounds of battlefields. This gallery also has an exhibition of old and new weapons, including obsolete ones. Pictures of high-tech weapons that the BSF uses, add to the attraction

The last and the eighth gallery has been converted into a theatre. A large screen with a projector and a seating capacity for 50 people has been arranged here and a 20-minute movie will be shown on the working of the BSF.

A BSF inspector, who didn’t wish to be named, said, “The motive behind opening the museum was to make people aware about the BSF’s role in guarding the most sensitive and geopolitically significant borders of India with Pakistan in the west and Bangladesh in the east.”

A sub-inspector, who oversees the technical work of the museum, said, “The museum is equipped with high-definition CCTV cameras. We will control the museum’s working and security from a control room in the facility itself.”