Buoyed over the success and public response of the first phase of its anti-drug campaign ‘Yudh Nashian Virudh’, the Punjab government is all set to launch the second phase of the campaign from the next month with more focus on de-addiction and rehabilitation.
A top Punjab government functionary, who strategises this campaign, said the government was satisfied with the first phase of the campaign which on Thursday completed 110 days starting from March 1 and the public feedback of the campaign has been encouraging.
“The entire top leadership of the party got positive feedback about the campaign during the electioneering for the Ludhiana West bypolls and praised state government’s efforts to curb the drug menace. With barely one and half months left for the assembly polls, the sustained success of the campaign against drugs can be our strongest point,” a senior party functionary said.
In this second phase, according to the senior government functionary quoted above, focus would be on de-addiction inside jails and linking rehabilitation centres of the government to skill centres.
“Till now, we have focused mainly on catching smugglers and putting him behind bars. There is no denying the fact that we are lagging in the de-addiction and rehabilitation part. Our full focus will be on these two aspects in the second phase,”
Notably, in the first phase, government had decided to implement few key features of Manipur’s policy on de-addiction and rehabilitation of addicts, including adopting community-based detoxification camp, home detoxification, counselling centres and peer-led intervention for those users who are not willing for residential/in-house treatment services. However, it could not be implemented as the focus of the first phase remained on enforcement and catching the suppliers to reach the supply.
In the second phase, the technical education department is also being roped in to link the rehabilitation centres with skill development programmes.
A senior government functionary said the second phase focuses more on accused lodged inside the jail, especially those who were caught for the first time with non-commercial quantity that is less than 5 gm in case of heroin.
Initially, the Punjab government has set May 31 as the deadline to wipe out drugs from the state. However, on the last date of the deadline, Punjab DGP Gaurav Yadav, while highlighting achievements of the first phase of the campaign, had said that the police had choked the supply line of the drugs but a lot more needs to be done to sustain the achievement of the first phase.
Special DGP (law and order) Arpit Shukla, who looks after ‘Yudh Nashian Virudh’ campaign on the aspect of Punjab Police, said because of police’s continuous strictness on peddlers, availability of drugs has reached a minimal point.
“We are making our best to sustain the movement as daily cordon and search operations are being done. Daily wise reports about raids, arrests and recovery are being analysed in routine to see the trend by our experts,” said Shukla.
In the first phase of 110 days till today, Punjab Police have arrested 18,236 smugglers.