Chandigarh: Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Sunday described drug addiction as the most serious issue confronting Punjab and accused the state and central governments of failing to check the spread of drugs, saying the political blame game could no longer substitute for action.Addressing the third session of his “Warring with Warriors” live interaction with Congress workers, Warring said the Congress would take the fight against drugs to the grassroots and work alongside families affected by addiction and drug-related deaths.“Laggi nazar Punjab nu, ehdi nazar utaar lo” (an evil eye has hit Punjab, let us ward it off), he said, referring to the deterioration in the state’s social situation despite the claims of a “Rangla Punjab”.
Warring said he had received numerous videos and accounts from villages depicting what he described as the alarming scale of drug addiction. “My soul was shaken after watching that video,” he said, while referring to videos showing the consequences of drug abuse.He said the issue was no longer confined to any particular section of society and was “eating our generation”. Referring to prominent sportspersons and athletes whom he said had fallen prey to addiction and subsequently died, Warring said the scale of the crisis demanded urgent intervention.“Every mother has one demand — just finish the drugs,” he said, describing the distress of parents and elderly family members who, according to him, were witnessing their children succumb to addiction.
“How painful and traumatic is it for a father to light the pyre of his son?” he asked.Warring cited several examples to underline the devastating impact of drugs on rural Punjab. He said that during a visit to a village in the Lambi Assembly constituency of Muktsar district, he was told that the village had not witnessed a wedding procession for years and that only funeral processions were being seen.“I was told that for years, there is no baraat taken from this village, only the funeral processions because of the scourge of drugs,” he said.
He also cited the example of a village in Amritsar district where, there were around 400 widows and 900 orphans. He said elderly women, including those around 80 years of age, were being forced to work to support and raise their grandchildren as their parents died of drugs. In another example, Warring claimed that in a village in the Ludhiana parliamentary constituency, around 400 of 500 households were involved in selling “chitta”, a colloquial term commonly used in Punjab for illicit drugs.He also disclosed that he was told that a woman athlete in Mansa had sold her six-month-old baby for Rs 1.8 lakh to obtain money for drugs.Warring questioned the Punjab government’s earlier promise to eliminate drugs within three months. “What happened to the claims of the government to finish the drugs in three months?” he asked.
He said the government’s financial assistance to women had failed to address the underlying drug crisis. According to Warring, when women were given Rs 3,000-Rs 4,500, some told him they did not need the money and instead wanted the government to save their children from drugs.“You get just one pack of chitta,” he quoted affected families as saying, adding that in some cases women were compelled to part with the money because their children could not resist the urge to consume drugs.Warring also criticised the silence of sections of the mainstream media over the drug crisis. He alleged that media coverage was instead focused on so called “Congress infighting” and the “fake achievements” of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.He further alleged that people posting videos of drug-overdose deaths on social media were being intimidated by police and forced to remove them.Why are you trying to hide things?” Warring asked the state government, saying it should have the courage to confront the truth rather than prevent information about the crisis from reaching the public.Holding both the Centre and the Punjab government responsible, Warring said the incumbent state government could not continue attributing the drug problem entirely to previous governments.
“You can’t claim that everything you have inherited from the previous government. You have been here for about five years now. You have to own the responsibility. CM Mann has to own the responsibility,” he said.Warring also questioned the accountability mechanism announced by the Punjab government under which district police chiefs were to be held responsible for drug-related deaths in their respective jurisdictions.Addressing the Director General of Police, he asked how many SSPs or police commissioners had been held responsible for drug-related deaths in their districts.He revealed that seven overdose deaths had occurred between August 14 and 20 in seven districts of the Malwa region, and questioned whether any action had been taken against the concerned SSPs.“Did you take any action against the SSPs?” he asked the DGP and the Chief Minister.
Warring urged Congress workers, describing them as Congress Warriors”, to take the campaign against drugs into villages and local communities.He asked party workers to reach out to families affected by drug-related deaths, support them and share their grief.“This fight is to get freedom from drugs,” he said.Warring said that when governments and chief ministers failed to fulfil their promises, it was the responsibility of citizens and political workers to step forward and serve society.He asserted that the Congress would fight to eradicate drugs from Punjab and would not use previous governments as an excuse for failing to address the crisis.The Punjab Congress president said the fight against drugs was ultimately about saving the state’s young generation, families and social fabric, and called for collective action at the grassroots level rather than political rhetoric