By Jag Mohan Thaken
CHANDIGARH: While addressing the concluding ceremony of the ‘Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra’ held in Jalandhar, Punjab on September 30,2026, India’s Union Home Minister & Minister of Cooperation, Amit Shah, said that the trade of Chitta has expanded during the tenure of the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab. The Union Minister announced that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) will fight the upcoming elections on the issue of a Nasha Mukt Punjab. He further stated that the BJP has resolved to make Punjab ‘Chitta-Mukt’ before 31 December 2029 and to send those involved in the drug trade to jail. He added that Drug abuse destroys our coming generations. Only the BJP, under the leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi, can create a strict system that ensures drugs do not reach the youth of Punjab.
“We will not allow even one gram of drugs to be sold in Punjab, nor will we allow even one gram of drugs to enter India through Punjab. This is our resolve”, Shah said.
Stressing on BJP’s Nasha-Mukt Bharat national resolve, in a post on X, Union Home Minister Shri Amit Shah stated, “Modi govt. is determined to shield its youth from the scourge of drugs. In a joint operation by Gujarat ATS, Indian Coast Guard and Central intelligence agencies, 526 kg of Methamphetamine and Heroin has been seized from an Iranian boat in India’s EEZ, 160 NM northwest of Lakshadweep and 490 NM southwest of Mumbai. Five Pakistani nationals have been arrested, with further investigation underway to identify the wider network and its intended receivers. Upholding a stellar example of coordination and cooperation among agencies, the 16-day long operation also seized an Iranian boat.”
Blaming the present Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government in the state Shah said, “More than 5,000 traffickers across the country have been jailed under the PIT-NDPS Act, but why has not a single action been taken this year in Punjab, where drug abuse is most prevalent? The Chief Minister should answer.”
Shah alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party government, which came to power with the slogan of a drug-free Punjab, has pushed Punjab into the quagmire of drugs.
Defying the Shah’s claim, expressing the steps being taken by the AAP government, a press release of Punjab Government claimed, on September 30, “Police teams have continued its drive against drugs ‘Yudh Nashian Virudh’ for 578th day with 114 drug smugglers arrested today and recovered 3.8 kg heroin, 250 grams opium, 8 kg Ganja, 255 intoxicant pills and Rs 5000 drug money from their possession. With this, the number of total drug smugglers arrested has reached 80,919 in just 578 days. As part of De-addiction, the Punjab Police has convinced 11 persons to undergo de-addiction and rehabilitation treatment today.”
Leaders of non-BJP political parties have strongly reacted to the statement of Amit Shah.
Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, in a press statement issued on September 30, asked the union Home Minister Amit Shah – “Why did it take his government such a long time to feel the severity and intensity of the drug problem in Punjab. Why just on the eve of elections?”
Warring added that the BJP government at the centre completely turned a blind eye towards the scourge of drugs in Punjab during the Aam Aadmi Party regime. “Now that the elections are round the corner, Mr Shah has woken up to the problem of drugs in Punjab”, he remarked.
Warring said, “While the AAP government in Punjab is responsible for its abject failure to control the supply and peddling of drugs in the state, the government of India also failed in maintaining an oversight. Besides, it also did not take any visible and effective measures to stop the smuggling of drugs from across the border with drones.”
Questioning the deadline fixed by the Union Home Minister, Punjab Congress president, Raja warring asked – As to why has he set such a long deadline, till December, 2029, for finishing the problem of drugs in Punjab. “Leave aside Punjab, who knows whether the BJP will be in power at the centre by then, as in all likelihood it will not?”, Warring asked while remarking, “it is like a long-post-dated cheque of a crashing bank”. He asked why did the BJP government at the centre woke up to the problem of drugs only on the eve of elections?
Countering the attack, Aam Aadmi Party has also questioned Amit Shah–BJP Must Answer Where Drugs Are Coming From? Why Doesn’t BJP Start Its ‘Nasha Mukt Yatra’ From Gujarat, its own ruled state?
AAP’s Punjab Chief Spokesperson and MLA Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal on Wednesday questioned the BJP over its campaign against drugs in Punjab, asking where the drugs entering the country are coming from and why the party does not begin its ‘Nasha Mukt Yatra’ from Gujarat. He said that before targeting Punjab, Union Home Minister Amit Shah must explain the large drug consignments being intercepted at Gujarat ports, the interstate supply routes feeding Punjab and the BJP’s position on the ₹6,000-crore synthetic drug case involving Bikram Singh Majithia.
Addressing a press conference, Dhaliwal said that if the BJP is genuinely serious about ending drugs, it must answer for the record of the Akali-BJP government and the drug supply routes operating through Gujarat instead of turning Punjab into the sole target of its political campaign. The AAP Punjab Chief Spokesperson stated, “Every citizen of Punjab knows how the drug network spread across the state during the 2007-2017 Akali-BJP government.”
He noted, “Under the leadership of CM Bhagwant Singh Mann, the Punjab Government has launched a comprehensive war against drugs. Thousands of smugglers have already been put behind bars and strict action is continuing against those involved in the drug trade.”
The AAP Punjab Chief Spokesperson stated, “Punjab shares a 532-kilometre-long international border with Pakistan, while a 50-kilometre area along the border comes under the BSF. Drones are being used to bring drugs and weapons across the border. CM Bhagwant Singh Mann has repeatedly demanded that the Centre install anti-drone systems and take effective steps to seal the border, but the Central Government is running away from its responsibility.”
“The Punjab Government is doing everything within its jurisdiction to stop the drug trade, but border security is the responsibility of the Central Government. The Centre must strengthen surveillance, install anti-drone systems and take effective measures to stop the smuggling of drugs and weapons across the border,” he said.
Keeping aside the political blame game, we are quoting the version of an Author, Editor, Analyst, Commentator and an apolitical person K.B.S. Sidhu, a retired IAS officer, who had been the Special Chief Secretary Government of Punjab and the founder editor of The KBS Chronicle. In his series of six articles on his platform — The KBS Chronicle, Sidhu writes—
“Punjab does not cultivate opium. It does not manufacture heroin. It contains no precursor chemical industry of consequence. Every gram of the narcotics destroying its youth arrives from somewhere else — and the failure to interrogate that supply chain with the rigour it demands is as much a failure of national security policy as it is of state policing.
Punjab’s drug requirements are entirely met from outside the state. Charas enters through Himachal Pradesh; opium and poppy husk from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. The dominant stream — heroin, Chitta — flows from the Golden Crescent: Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan.
A kg of heroin in Afghanistan costs approximately one lakh rupees. By the time it reaches its Indian destination, the price rises to five crore rupees — a 500-fold escalation that drives every element of the supply chain.
Though Punjab does not produce narcotics but absorbs them at scale, the supply chain is international, ISI-assisted, and multi-vector. Enforcement arrests the courier and ignores the financier. The treatment system recovers fewer than two in a hundred. The narrative has damaged Punjab’s reputation without contributing a single solution. The time has come for the final question: what, concretely, needs to be done, by whom, and in what order?
According to Sidhu, the drug problem in Punjab took root long before 2022 and grew under successive governments of every stripe. Every party that has governed Punjab over the last two decades owes the State an account. A fair question for the present government is whether it has made the problem worse or better, and on specifics such as preventive detentions and coordination meetings it must answer for itself. But no single party created this, and no single party can claim to be free of it.
This is the most important question. Several of the strongest levers already sit with the Centre: the BSF, which guards the border and since 2021 has jurisdiction fifty kilometres inland; the NCB; and the power, under the 1988 preventive-detention law, for the Central Government itself to detain major traffickers. Shri Amit Shah said the NCB office would be opened regardless of the State’s view. None of this needs to wait for an election result. Punjab’s drug problem is a shared responsibility of the Centre and the State, and it is best tackled together, whoever governs in Chandigarh. (IPA Service)
