Bhubaneswar : Former Union Minister and senior Congress leader Subodh Kant Sahai today said "Gujarat, a state, publicised but much doubted for its "good" governance, has turned into a major drug cartel".
He further said that there is a clear-cut connection between unemployment and drugs and supply of drugs in such big quantities is generally routed to unemployed youth. Never earlier in the world have drugs in such huge quantity seized. The state should have paid attention to the massive unemployment thereby minimising the consumption of drugs and controlling such huge illicit trade.
He alleged that there is a big mismatch in the statistics provided by the various departments of the government and the ground reality on unemployment. Actually, Modi government neither understands the seriousness of unemployment nor has any credible plans to address this mammoth problem. It is unfortunate that no serious effort including education has been made to address the issue. New Education Policy has not been implemented even after seven years of Modi rule.
The Congress leader said that the relationship between unemployment and drug supply should be seriously looked into. The impending state elections will test Mr. Modi on the issue of unemployment as a large number of young voters will be exercising their franchise .
Mr. Sahai expressed his grave concern on what had been done to fight unemployment in the last seven years as the original constitution of the BJP speaks of unemployment as a Fundamental Right.
He reiterated that Gujarat, a coastal state, becoming major drug cartel is a cause of concern. The administration appears to be indifferent to the matter, and drugs are being shipped to India, which should be stopped immediately. A full inquiry into how drugs enter the country and the involvement of the port where drugs were recovered should be conducted.
Drugs worth 15000 Crores (estimate) have been seized from the Mundra port (Adani port) in Gujarat, and we are still waiting for a statement from Modi government.
The consignment found its way to India during the chaos that followed the takeover of Afghanistan by the
Taliban. With an eye on the Uttar Pradesh elections, the Right-wing ecosystem has been dog-whistling and whipping up fears about drugs from Afghanistan swamping India with the help of “anti-national” criminals. But the seizures underscore the fact that drugs have been flowing to India even before the Taliban found their feet in Afghanistan, and the doomsayers will now be hard put to explain how such a big consignment entered India through Gujarat where the BJP is entrenched in power for years.
The huge haul has thrown up another question: why has Gujarat become the most preferred gateway to India for drug smugglers? The Congress cited several instances and pointed out that the post of a full-time Narcotics Control Bureau chief had been lying vacant for 18 months. The Enforcement Directorate has now launched a money-laundering probe into the Gujarat haul.
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