Visakhapatnam: Excise department faces uphill task in rooting out ganja menace in agency

For the first time, the Prohibition and Excise department successfully ventured into the Agency area in Visakhapatnam district last year and destroyed ganja plants for two months. But their efforts di

VIJAYAWADA: For the first time, the Prohibition and Excise department successfully ventured into the Agency area in Visakhapatnam district last year and destroyed ganja plants for two months. But their efforts did not meet with full success. The excise officials managed to weed out banned crop only in 30 percent of the total cultivated area.

Thus, the excise department officials still have a herculean task ahead and they have to sweat out to fulfil their target of eliminating the menace of ganja from the state.

Though, the officials are keen on going ahead with their task, they have encountered a problem in the form of Maoists. As 70 percent of  the crop is being grown in the areas that are strongholds of Maoists, they did not get the police clearance to carry out the operations.

In all, the presence of ganja cultivation is prevalent in nine mandals - eight in Visakhapatnam and one in East Godavari district.

With the root cause of the menace out of their bounds, the officials are focusing on control the smuggling of harvested ganja by adopting technology and deploying human intelligence to identify the processing and dumping areas of the drug.

Of the nine mandals, except GK Veedhi, the excise department took up the ganja destruction activity completely or partially  in all the  mandals like Paderu, Tumriguda, Hukumpet, Chintapalli, Pedabayalu, Munchingput, etc.

Interestingly, the officials during their raids realised that only 1.01 acre of land was a patta land out of the total 10,000 acres where ganja was being cultivated.

The remaining land is under the control of the forest department and government. Funded by outsiders, farmers in the Agency area are cultivating ganja and are said to be earning `1,000 to `2,000 per kg. The price of the same goes up to `4,000 in Visakhapatnam. From there, the price goes upwards of `10,000 and more by the time it reaches Hyderabad and other parts of the country for end use.

When asked about the future activity to completely eradicate the ganja menace, Excise Commissioner P Lakshmi Narasimham said that they were planning to carry out similar destruction drives every year and would also keep a strict vigil on transportation.