Punjab’s drug crisis is rapidly turning into a major political mobilisation issue ahead of the next year’s assembly election.
After the BJP took out a statewide anti-drug yatra and the AAP launched a door-to-door report-card campaign, the Shiromani Akali Dal has entered the contest with its own grassroots strategy – a women-led “Maawan-Dheeyan Insaaf” campaign under the leadership of Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
The SAD campaign is significant not only because of its focus on drugs, but also because of the way it is being organised.
The party has launched a door-to-door exercise involving booth-level workers across Punjab. This gives the SAD campaign a clear Malwa-centric footprint. These are not merely party meetings. Women from families affected by drugs are being brought into the campaign, while memorandums are being submitted to the administration demanding action and rehabilitation. Harsimrat Kaur has made mothers and daughters the face of the campaign, arguing that families are bearing the consequences of drug addiction. She has accused the AAP government of failing to control drug trafficking and has raised the cases of Mohanjit Singh and Gulzar Singh while demanding justice and independent investigations. These allegations are part of the SAD’s political campaign and should be distinguished from established findings. The BJP’s Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra is the most expansive geographically. The BJP is using drugs, law and order and corruption as central themes. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has also taken the government’s report card directly to voters, beginning from his Dhuri constituency.
Four simultaneous yatras started on September 18 and will cover all 117 assembly constituencies and around 4,000 km before culminating in Jalandhar on September 30.
For the Akali Dal, therefore, the “Maawan-Dheeyan Insaaf” campaign serves multiple purposes: putting the AAP government under pressure on drugs, creating a women-focused political constituency, taking the party organisation deeper into rural areas and strengthening its presence in the Malwa belt.
