Punjab leaders had voters on a drug high

The Election Commission’s seizure of drugs worth Rs 40 crore during the Punjab election season has drawn attention to the widespread use of drugs — ranging from intoxicating tablets and syrups to heroin and poppy seeds — to woo voters in the state.

Updated on: Jan 31, 2012, 02:21:35 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Punjab politicians had voters on a drug high during the election campaign that lasted a fortnight.

The Election Commission’s seizure of drugs worth Rs 40 crore during the Punjab election season has drawn attention to the widespread use of drugs — ranging from intoxicating tablets and syrups to heroin and poppy seeds — to woo voters in the state.

“We believe that the drugs were for electoral purposes,” deputy election commissioner Alok Shukla has said.

An Election Commission (EC) official said that bribing a voter is not rampant in Punjab because of the state’s economic influence. However, drug addiction is a huge problem and intoxicants are often used to lure voters.

Over half the households once surveyed in the state by the youth affairs ministry had reported intensive drug abuse. The ministry had initiated a drug de-addiction programme in some districts but officials admit the problem is deep-rooted.

Its scale became evident when the police seized 37.54 kg of heroin worth Rs 37 crore in the international market. Close to 10 lakh tablets of intoxicants, 18,312 kg of drug powder and 4,300 bottles of cough syrup were also seized.

For the not-so-rich, there were huge quantities of country-made liquor and opium seeds. The police seized 7.18 lakh bottles of country-made liquor, 377 kg of smack and about 100 kg of the seeds.

The drug problem in Punjab can be understood in comparison with other states. For instance, black money to the tune of Rs 55 crore was seized during the election season in Tamil Nadu while liquor seized was worth only Rs 2 crore. On the other hand, the black money seized in Punjab was only to the tune of Rs 12 crore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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