Muskan Thakur
Early Times Report
Jammu, Sept 6: Union Home Minister Amit Shah has revealed a dramatic escalation in India's anti-narcotics enforcement, stating that drug seizures since 2014 have skyrocketed nearly fourfold compared to the preceding decade, marking what he described as a decisive shift from piecemeal action to a coordinated national campaign against narco-terrorism.
Drawing a sharp contrast between the two periods, Shah stated that between 2004 and 2014, authorities seized approximately 26 lakh kilograms of narcotics, valued at nearly Rs 40,000 crore. In the twelve years since 2014, however, that figure has surged to over 1 crore 19 lakh kilograms — valued at close to Rs1 lakh 89 thousand crore — representing more than a fourfold jump in the quantity of drugs taken off the streets.
The scale-up extends to the destruction of seized narcotics as well. While only 3 lakh 36 thousand kilograms of drugs were destroyed in the 2004–2014 period, the figure has since climbed to 48 lakh 68 thousand kilograms — a nearly fifteen-fold increase, underscoring what officials are calling an unprecedented intensification of enforcement action.
Shah attributed this leap to a complete overhaul of India's anti-narcotics architecture since 2019, including the creation of a four-tier NCORD coordination mechanism, dedicated Anti-Narcotics Task Forces across states, a restructured Narcotics Control Bureau, and the NIDAAN portal — a national database of drug offenders. Investigators, he said, have adopted a dual "Bottom-to-Top and Top-to-Bottom" approach, tracing even small seized packets back to their source networks while simultaneously working forward from large border consignments to track how they were meant to reach end users.
He added that technology-driven investigation has also been ramped up to tackle darknet transactions, encrypted communication, cryptocurrency payments and dead-drop deliveries, with a dedicated Dark Net-Crypto Cell being set up under the Anti-Narcotics Task Force framework.
Shah noted that the enforcement push has been backed by intensive institutional engagement, with 10 apex-level meetings, 7 executive meetings, 277 state-level meetings and nearly 16,800 district-level NCORD meetings held so far, alongside international cooperation agreements signed with 46 countries.
Looking ahead, the Home Minister announced a three-year roadmap from July 2026 to July 2029, declaring the period a "mission mode" phase built on four pillars — intelligence-led enforcement, control of precursor and synthetic drugs, demand and harm reduction, and capacity building. Under this plan, agencies including the BSF, CISF, Indian Coast Guard, Customs and DRI are set to intensify border and port surveillance, while the CBI, Ministry of External Affairs and Interpol will work to bring back fugitives linked to narcotics networks. |
