60% of panchayats in T.N.’s west zone declare their villages ganja free

The State’s West Zone Police have embarked on a mission to achieve a 100% target in the next six months; arrests, seizures and conviction rates have gone up, said West Zone Inspector General R. Sudhakar

Of the 1,678 village panchayats in west zone of Tamil Nadu, 1,037 village panchayat heads have declared that their villages are free of ganja. The West Zone Police are emarbking a mission to achieve as close to a 100 per cent ganja free status as possible, within the next six months.

Speaking to The Hindu, West Zone Inspector-General of Police R. Sudhakar said that the move to declare villages as ganja free was not done by the police; it was an initiative by the village panchayat heads, while the enforcement is done by the police.

Of the eight revenue districts in this region namely the Nilgiris, Coimbatore Rural, Tiruppur Rural, Erode, Salem Rural, Namakkal, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri districts, only the Nilgiris was lagging behind: of its 449 hamlets, only 181 are declared ganja free. Mr. Sudhakar however pointed out that there could be some other pressing problems that need to be handled in the Nilgiris first, and many of the hamlets are tiny, and as such ganja might not be there but the declaration has not yet been made.

Cutting across political party affliations, this initiative has yeilded rich dividends and even panchayat heads from the AIADMK and BJP had come forward and declared that their villages free of ganja. All this was possible only because of sustained enforcement of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985: from 382 cases in 2019, this went up to 712 in 2020 and again in 2021 it shot up to 1,130 and it touched an all-time high of 1,861 cases in 2022, Mr. Sudhakar pointed out.

It was not just registering of cases alone, but the arrest of ganja peddlers too had seen a rise with 521 arrests in 2019 going up to 838 in 2020 and 1,003 in 2021, and then doubling in 2022 with the 2,421 arrests. Even the seizure of ganja has risen: in 2019 the seizure was 312 kg and it went up to 934.5 kg in 2020 and in 2021 it almost doubled and touched 2,118.7 kg. In 2022, it shot up to 2,221.6 kg.

While the arrest, detention and conviction rates have improved steadily, multiple offenders were detained under Goondas Act, from 3 detentions in 2019 and 12 in 2020, this went up to 18 in 2021 and 42 in 2022. Bail cancellation of offenders was stepped up from nil cases in 2019 and 2020, this went up to 6 in 2021 and in 2022 it went upto 27.

As the conviction rates under the NDPS Act were low: 98 cases in 2019 and 94 cases in 2020, the police meticulously followed up such cases and in 2021 the convictions went up to 115 and then almost tripled in 2022 with 328 cases ending in conviction, Mr. Sudhakar said.