Punjab’s drug war needs results

The Centre and state governments must bury their differences and work together to dismantle smuggling networks, strengthen rehabilitation and create jobs

"We ended Naxalism, time to eliminate the drug menace in Punjab," Home Minister Amit Shah says, promising a drug-free state by December 2029 if the BJP wins the 2027 election. The ambition is welcome. But Punjab’s tragedy is fast becoming a campaign plank, and it deserves better. The drug-gangster nexus is real. Foreign-based gangsters direct narcotics-and-arms modules. Punjab accounted for 298 of the 305 drone-linked smuggling cases detected nationwide in 2025.

On October 13, the nexus turned lethal. Anti-drug activist Parvinder Singh Jhota was shot dead at a Mansa chemist’s shop, allegedly by its owner, during a Facebook Live broadcast. The causes are not mysterious. Studies of the region find that unemployment, underemployment, falling farm incomes and indebtedness drive initiation, with youth joblessness in Punjab near 20 per cent. Cheap heroin met a generation whose options were a farm that no longer pays or a visa abroad.

Causality runs both ways, since addiction also destroys livelihoods. With too few rehabilitation centres and little aftercare, relapse is high. Is the AAP government doing enough? Its defenders have a case. Yudh Nashian Virudh, launched in March 2025, treats users as patients: police say about 62,000 people have been referred to de-addiction or opioid-substitution centres, over 10,000 received immunity under Section 64A of the NDPS Act, and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann claims more than 85,000 arrests in three and a half years. Police also claim a near-90 per cent NDPS conviction rate. Akali leader Bikram Majithia has been arrested in a disproportionate-assets case, and the government blames earlier regimes for allowing the trade to flourish.

Yet arrests are inputs, not outcomes. A government that promised to end drugs within months cannot claim victory while activists are killed in daylight. The Centre has sought reports on three such deaths in Mansa, Sangrur and Gurdaspur. Congress, the Akalis and the BJP all say the trade persists, and the unanswered question is whether the big fish, and any patronage behind them, have been reached. On this evidence, enough has not yet been done.

The BJP’s case has its own weakness. The Centre guards the border, runs the NCB and has ruled in Delhi for twelve years; AAP asks why Mr Shah’s yatra did not begin in Gujarat. Blame traded between Chandigarh and Delhi helps only the smuggler.

The way out is unglamorous but achievable: a joint Centre-state task force on borders and drones; isolation of gangsters in jails and prosecution of complicit staff; tighter policing of pharmacies and prescription opioids; real protection for whistle-blowers; funded rehabilitation beds and aftercare; and jobs, through farm diversification, industry and skilling, that give young people a reason to stay. Punjab does not need a war declared from a stage. It needs success measured in lives saved, not arrests made, and a Centre willing to share the burden rather than merely audit it.