On September 28 this year the chief justice of Uttarakhand High Court will be launching an initiative to eradicate drug and alcohol abuse in the State through the ‘Sankalp Nashamukt Devbhoomi’ scheme. The scheme is an initiative of Uttarakhand’s State Legal Service Authority (SLSA), under which paralegal volunteers will be detaining people who are addicts or are selling drugs to others.
Member secretary of SLSA, Gyanendra Kumar said, “The idea is to target every person who is a peddler or an addict. For this we have established a constitution task force which is combined effort of judicial and administrative officers along with police to make a reforming task force.
This team will include, one member of Deputy Superintendent of Police rank, two sub-inspectors from police department one male and one female, judicial secretary of District Legal Service Authority (DLSA), one member from forest department, one from revenue department, one member of a rehabilitation centre and one person from a non-governmental organisation.” He further added, “These actions will be taken further in two phases. In the first phase we will be giving counselling to the addicts and sending the dealers behind the bars.
The counselling team will include one professional counsellor, one clinical psychologist, one doctor, one judicial officer and one police personnel. In the second phase we will provide treatment for those addicts who require medical attention. In Dehradun we will be conducting this scheme as a pilot project.”
Secretary of DLSA, Neha Kushwaha said, “We have already conducted a survey and research at the possible places where we could have found the young children and other possible addicts.
At present there is no Government drug rehabilitation centre available here so we are working in a flexible manner with the already established drug rehabilitation centres. We will personally be ensuring to make sure that the facilities they provide are up to the mark.”