Punjab’s drug menace has become the ruling Aam Aadmi Party’s ultimate vulnerability. Taking on drugs by arresting peddlers, smugglers, and addicts without forming a policy has proved to be a treatment without proper diagnosis. Because its high-decibel anti-drug campaign, Yudh Nasheyan Virudh, had flaws, but because it set a deadline, not.
A pledge to finish the drug trade in three to six months may have won AAP a historic mandate of 92 out of 117 seats in 2022, but the political cost the party is now paying is heavy.
AAP sought three to six months and won, but the situation further aggravated, and the trade spread to remote villages. The then state party chief, Captain Amarinder Singh, promised to finish the trade in four weeks, winning voters’ trust. He formed the government but failed to achieve the target. Public admission by Punjab Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan that his government failed to fulfil the promise to end drug use, and increased admissions at rehab centres, suggest that the deadline to finish the drug trade was set in a hurry while the war was still active.
The promise initially worked for the Congress in 2017.
BJP leaders, during the Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra, are seeking an extended deadline of two years, as it is now clear that giving a short deadline won’t work. AAP has now realised the problem was bigger than it estimated, and it can’t set a fresh deadline. The party leaders blame ports and drones for the drugs entering the state, but people ask why the government failed to stop the supplies from entering Punjab. Not really. AAP promised to finish it in four months and couldn’t finish it in four years. The BJP has promised direct enforcement and supply disruption, striking directly at drug traffickers, dismantling inter-state and international supply routes, asset seizures, and the medical and psychological rehabilitation of addicts. The party plans to initiate a public-driven social movement by actively involving local citizens rather than relying solely on compromised local policing channels. Citizens who expose local drug sales in Punjab say they are being threatened, beaten, and driven to despair. Two Sangrur cases this month have turned informant safety into a political fight over whether the state’s anti-drug drive protects complainants or leaves them to peddlers and village power. He had posted footage showing chitta being sold near his house. Police have booked the sarpanch and seven others. AAP called him an addict. The question is: why can’t a convict who completed his sentence be a whistleblower?
Is the BJP walking in the footsteps that the Congress made in 2017 and AAP in 2022? On September 21, Jagseer Singh, or Jagga, 30, of Namol allegedly swallowed poison outside the Sangrur DC office.
He alleged that sarpanch Sukhwinder Singh “Sukhi” Punia forced him to delete it, smashed CCTV gear, and assaulted his family.
Cops, however, say that Jagseer himself faced nine earlier cases, with convictions under the NDPS Act.
