BJP says, ‘Drugs Are the Sixth River of Panjab’

September

2026

Three men shot dead 45-year-old Navdeep Singh, husband of a Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) sarpanch (village council head), Kulwinder Kaur of Gaggobua village, Tarn Taran district. Navdeep had an ongoing personal dispute with a local jeweler, Surinder Singh alias Sonu Kanda, and had reported him as a drug peddler. Meanwhile, on the eighth day of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Nasha Mukti Yatra (Drug Free March), the party's state president Kewal Singh Dhillon blamed the Aam Aadmi Party government for the drug menace in the state, alleging that chitta (opioids) were being delivered to people’s doorsteps. He said, 'Panjab, known as the land of five rivers, is today witnessing what can be described as a sixth river, the flow of drugs.' Dhillon also linked the problem to a lack of industrial opportunities and economic challenges, which, he said, were making youngsters more vulnerable to drugs. The BJP's four parallel yatras in different parts of Panjab are scheduled to travel nearly 4K kms and cover all 117 Assembly constituencies before converging in Jalandhar on 30 Sep. The larger question behind this campaign is whether the BJP transforms itself from a party with pockets of support into a statewide organization. In the 2022 Panjab Assembly election, the BJP contested 73 seats, won only two and secured around 6.6% of the statewide vote. In 2024, contesting all 13 Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) constituencies independently, its vote share rose sharply to about 18.5%. It still failed to win a parliamentary seat. A Lok Sabha election can benefit from a national narrative, central leadership, and broad consolidation across several Assembly segments. A state election is far more granular. Who is the candidate in the village? Who runs the booth? Which local leader can enter a farmer's home and be heard? Who has credibility within a community when a local dispute arises? That brings us back to drugs. Drug abuse is politically powerful precisely because, for many Panjabis, it is not primarily political. It is personal. It is the fear of parents watching their ward slip into addiction. It is a family spending money on rehabilitation. It is a young person losing productive years. It is also a question of policing, trafficking, organized crime, border smuggling, health infrastructure, and employment. That makes it easy to campaign on but extremely difficult to solve (earlier coverage).