If data released by the Punjab police is to be believed, drug menace in Punjab has not really taken off. The police on Thursday claimed that just about two per cent of the candidates for the recruitment drive were tested positive for drugs, mere 1.30 per cent has been tested positive for drugs.
The data comes as a shot in the Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal’s arm who has all along been claiming that the drug menace in the state was not as rampant as being projected by the media and the opposition.
Sukhbir Badal has described the Punjab Police’s mass scale recruitment drive as the “largest ever official samples available on the intensity of the drug menace in Punjab”.
Banking on the initial results of the dope-testing exercise, the Punjab Police on Thursday claimed that only around two per cent among thousands of candidates for police recruitment had tested positive for substance (drugs) abuse.
“The percentage of applicants who tested positive for drugs was a mere 1.30 per cent, that is 2,185 candidates, while another 0.65 per cent, that is 1,090 candidates, tested positive for performance enhancing drugs,” said Punjab Police’s Central Recruitment Board’s chairman and Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota.
Sahota said that this “fully exposes the falsehood of allegations of 70 to 80 per cent Punjabi youth being drug addicts”.
He revealed that a total of 6,23,507 candidates were found eligible for 7,416 posts of constables in the Punjab Police. “Over 1.67 lakh youths have already taken the Substance Abuse Test (SAT) till August 10 and the process is going on,” Sahota said.
“The response is most encouraging and indicative of Punjabis' general health and stamina. A total of 1,64,424, which is 98 per cent of the candidates, have cleared the SAT,” Sahota added.
The Punjab government had ordered dope testing for all applicants for the police jobs.
“In one of the largest ever official samples available on the intensity of the drug menace in Punjab, the Punjab Police recruitment drive currently underway has exposed the allegations of alarming prevalence of drugs among Punjabi youths as wild, reckless and utterly irresponsible,” stated the state government spokesperson.
Sahota maintained that “the drug menace is not even an iota of what it has been made out to be in some quarters”.
The youths who tested positive have been disqualified from the recruitment process. However, of them, the 1,090 candidates found using performance enhancing drugs like Amphetamine have been permitted by the authorities to reappear in the recruitment test after a gap of seven days, Sahota said.
The dope testing procedure was started on July 27 for the police recruitment being conducted in Amritsar and Jalandhar.
Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal had earlier said: “We want to show to the country that Punjab is being maligned by vested interests in the name of drugs.”
The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal, which has been in power in Punjab since 2007 in alliance with the BJP, and its leadership, is being openly accused by opposition Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of patronizing the multi-million dollar drugs mafia in the state.
Studies in recent years have indicated widespread substance abuse by youths and in the state.
Congress national vice-president Rahul Gandhi had, three years ago, claimed that drugs abuse was rampant in Punjab with 70 per cent people being addicted.
As drugs emerged out to be a major issue during the 2014 lok Sabha polls, Punjab Government has virtually launched a war on drugs, taking several significant decisions.
“The confusion being created about the actual number of Punjabi's affected by the drug problem has brought a bad name not only to the youth of the State but to the Punjab as a whole,” said the government spokesperson.
Spokesperson added that the recruitment drive and the disclosures about drug addiction being limited to just 1.30 percent among nearly two lakh applicants already tested have served to clean the image of the State in this regard.