Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Thursday said a massive campaign will be launched against drug menace in the state.

Addressing a Press conference today, Khattar said that stringent steps are being taken by the state government to curb drug misuse while understanding the fact that at present time, drug abuse has become a matter of serious concern for society.

The CM said a detailed State Action Plan has been prepared by the Haryana State Narcotics Control Bureau after a thorough study on all the aspects related to drugs last year. Village, ward, cluster, sub-division, district and state mission teams have been formed to involve citizens of all age groups in the ‘Yagya of drug-free Haryana’.

Khattar said 10 member teams would be constituted by the end of March and would include five local representatives and five officers. He said that soon a massive campaign against drugs would be launched across the state and a forward, backward linkage mechanism has been established to reach the roots of this menace.

He said to help those involved in drug abuse, drug de-addiction
centres would be set up and special counselling sessions for such
people would be ensured to help them to leave this bad habit and
further bring them into the mainstream.

“Taking a strict cognisance of the drug abuse, dedicated efforts are being made to curb the increasing trend of drug abuse. Haryana State Narcotics Control Bureau has been constituted to keep a close vigil on the smuggling and sale of drugs”, said Khattar.

Meanwhile, the Haryana government has decided to extend the benefits of Ayushman Bharat to all those families whose annual family income is less than Rs 1.80 lakh and to those who are not included in Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) data.

The CM said the decision of extending the benefits of Ayushmaan Bharat to those having family income less than Rs.1.80 lakh and those who are not included in SECC data has been taken while upholding the spirit of Antyodaya. “The process of registration of all such families having verified income has been started. Three phases of income verification
have already been done. Now the data of these verified families would be uploaded on the Ayushmaan Bharat portal so that they can get their cards,” informed Khattar.

The CM said as per the available data under Parivar Pehchan Patra there are around 23000 eligible old age pension beneficiaries who have never availed the benefits, due to any reason. Therefore now the state government has decided to adopt proactive approach for reaching out to these eligible pension beneficiaries.

“The biggest benefit of implementing the Parivar Pehchan Patra is that all such eligible beneficiaries have been identified through this data and now every possible effort would be made to ensure disbursement of due benefits to them,” he said.