Analysis: As Punjab Rehab Numbers Increase, Politics Intensifies Over Drug Problem

A nearly 164 per cent increase in de-addiction centre inmate data and recent controversies kicked off by cases of open drug sales in rural Punjab have once again highlighted the state's decades-old drug problem.

Dubbed a publicity failure by the opposition, the AAP government's "Yudh Nasheyan Virudh" campaign output focuses on the number of seizures, a higher conviction rate between 88-89 per cent and the jump in de-addiction centres. The government avoids discussing the three significant loopholes that undermine the high-decibel campaign.

One, the campaign was launched only 16 months ago. The nature of the drug problem demands that it should have been launched in 2022 itself. Secondly, the government avoids speaking on the supply of drugs and smuggling networks that spread deep into Punjab's soul, i.e., rural blocks. Bigger seizures, as claimed by the state government, while on one hand mean stronger policing, also mean continued inflow on the other. Thirdly, the government offered no clarification on why Punjab still accounts for a significantly higher number of cross-border drug smuggling incidents and high-value narcotic seizures than most other Indian states. That happened despite the deployment of anti-drone systems ( 'Baaz Akh' /Hawk Eye systems) and the joint operations with BSF.

Prompted by the ruling AAP government's failure to end the menace, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to make the state's drug problem a major poll plank. Accordingly, the party decided to launch a state-wide yatra to create awareness about the drug menace, which the ruling AAP failed to control during its four-year-long regime.

Party sources say the decision was taken after conducting multiple internal surveys which revealed that drug sales and drug overdose deaths were important issues responsible for rural stress.

Confirming the party's decision to launch the anti-drug campaign from September 18 onwards, BJP General Secretary Anil Sarin said a formal announcement of the campaign will be made on September 11.

"Be it the Congress or the AAP government, the promises to end drugs remain on paper, and nothing was done on the ground. The Guljar case reported in Sangrur blatantly shows how synthetic drugs were killing people in rural areas and how mafias were being sheltered by corrupt AAP leaders. AAP's Yudh Nasheyan Virudh is, in fact, against the victims. Only the BJP can help Punjab get rid of the drug problem as people have been betrayed by trusting Congress and AAP governments," Sarin said while confirming that top BJP leadership, including national president Nitin Nabin, will be present when the party launches the campaign.

The BJP leaders say the party's high-decibel campaign will not only create awareness, but the outcome of the yatra will also be used to prepare a blueprint for the poll campaign. The BJP, in fact, wants to build its hedge money on the drug issue, which will be central to the poll campaign. As the campaign will focus more on rural blocks to strengthen its rural voter base, the issue has also added to the anti-incumbency against the AAP, which promised to end the menace within four to six months but failed.

State Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhawa's recent statement about the AAP government's failure to fulfil the guarantee of eliminating synthetic drugs speaks volumes about the hollowness of AAP's state-wide anti-drug campaign 'Yudh Nashian Virudh'.

"Standing among the ladies, I accept that we could not fulfil the guarantee to eradicate drugs. It did not end. I want to make it clear that neither our MC, nor MLA, Minister, Speaker, nor the Chief Minister can help the 'Chitta Wala'. What happens is we can only arrest them; we cannot fire a bullet at them. When we catch them, the first person who approaches us is his mother who says, 'release our son as he is just an addict,'" Sandhawa said in a video.

Leader of Opposition Pratap Singh Bajwa, while taking a jibe at the chief minister and criticising the Yudh Nasheyan Virudh campaign, said, "When it could not reform its own Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to give up drinking, how can it claim success against drugs? Mann had even gone inside the Punjab Assembly in an inebriated condition and had refused to take the alcohol test," Bajwa said.

AAP Reacts To BJP's Yatras, Asks The Party To Join AAP

The BJP's announcement to launch an anti-drug yatra and to expose the AAP's Yudh Nasheyan Virudh campaign has left the ruling AAP fuming. AAP Punjab General Secretary Baltej Pannu advised the saffron party to join the AAP campaign instead of politicising the issue.

"The BJP should join Punjab's ongoing Yudh Nashheyan Virudh instead of launching a separate political campaign. The BJP must also answer for the heroin (chitta) menace that flooded Punjab during the 2007-17 Akali-BJP rule and pushed generations of the state's youth into the drug trap, instead of now attempting to make the issue a political plank," Pannu said while claiming that the AAP campaign was successful as 60,239 cases have been registered and 77,509 people booked since March 2025, ever since the campaign was launched.

Pannu said the BJP's decision to launch a parallel campaign was a political move, as AAP's campaign was succeeding.

"The BJP has started its own campaign because it feels that we are succeeding in this fight, and therefore, it wants to torpedo our work," he said.

How Punjab's Drug War Became Every Party's Alibi

Every government that has ruled Punjab in the last two decades sold the same ticket: give us a few weeks, or a few months, and 'chitta' will vanish.

The then Punjab Congress Chief, Captain Amarinder Singh, vowed at a rally in Bathinda in December 2015 to wipe out the drug menace within four weeks if he came to power. When Sukhbir Badal was deputy chief minister (2009-17), SAD treated Punjab as a victim, not a source. He used to say that the state produced no drugs, only served as a transit corridor for Pakistan-Afghanistan narco-terrorism.

Blame went to the Centre and BSF for an unsealed 550-km border, and to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh for legally grown opium leaking across state lines. Opposition talk of a Punjab drug epidemic was dismissed as a campaign to defame Punjabi youth.

AAP Supremo Arvind Kejriwal made as many as 9 announcements between November 27, 2016, August 15, 2023, April 2024, August 15, 2024, December 31, 2024, March 2, 2025, March 18, 2025, April 1, 2025, and May 16, 2025, to end the drugs within four to six months.

"AAP promised three to six months, then reset the clock again and again. Four years later, the Assembly Speaker has all but admitted the guarantee failed. Heroin still accounts for most of India's seizures, drones still cross the border, and a villager who asked a minister why drugs were still on his street is dead. That gap between slogan and street is the ammunition the opposition is now loading - while AAP answers with the same charge it used in opposition," says Anil Sarin.

Despite the AAP government's claims that the campaign Yudh Nashian Virudh was a success, the state government's own data shows that admissions in state de-addiction centres rose 164 per cent during the AAP regime.

From 9,577 admissions in 2024, the numbers rose to 25,290 in 2025, with tens of thousands more seeking institutional care through mid-2026. The registrations at Outpatient Opioid-Assisted Treatment (OOAT) clinics have continued to climb. Thousands of users who came forward voluntarily have also been granted legal immunity under Section 64A of the NDPS Act so they can enter medical rehabilitation without immediate criminal prosecution.