New Delhi, September 22: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday set 31 December 2029 as the deadline to uproot the drug trade from India, as he opened the third National Conference of Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) Heads of States and Union Territories in New Delhi. He told state officials that the fight would now be run on fixed targets, timelines and accountability.
The two-day ANTF conference, organised by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), has brought together ANTF heads from 36 States and Union Territories, along with representatives of government departments and other stakeholders.
Shah, who is also Minister of Cooperation, launched television commercials to raise awareness against narcotic substances and unveiled the NCB’s newly designed website. He also laid the foundation stone of new NCB zonal complexes in Lucknow and Dehradun. The best-performing ANTFs of States and Union Territories were honoured at the event.
Vision Document 2026-2029 sets over 100 targets
Shah said the ‘Vision Document 2026-2029’ was prepared after discussions with more than 35 departments and suggestions from all stakeholders. It has been given to everyone with definite targets and timelines, and will be reviewed after some time. He described it as “like the Gita” for all those involved in the fight against drugs.
The document rests on four pillars: enforcement, intelligence and operations; control of precursor and synthetic drugs; demand and harm reduction; and capacity building and coordination. More than 100 targets have been set under these pillars.
One of them is to register 1 lakh Nashamukt Mitras. Various ministries have so far registered 46,780, and they are already working, Shah said. In the coming days, Nashamukt Mitras will visit 10 lakh schools, colleges and institutions across the country to caution young people and sensitise campus directors.
From seizures to dismantling drug networks
Shah said states now had to move “from Meeting to Mission, from Reporting to Result, from Seizure to the dismantling of Networks, and from Case to Conviction”. The goal, he said, should be to turn the ANTF into an ‘Anti-Narco Mission Command’, and State Chief Secretaries would need a different approach to manpower, technology and budget. The Centre is putting emphasis on technology and forensics in capacity building.
Instead of a seizure-centric approach, agencies should aim to dismantle entire networks. Along with backward and forward investigation, he listed financial investigation and tracing digital links as priorities, and said action must hit the money earned by drug dealers.
Cartels are to be targeted at three levels: the entry point, the inter-state distribution system and local sales networks within districts. Districts will be grouped into three clusters: those where drugs are made or enter the country, those that serve as transport corridors, and those where drugs are consumed.
Shah also called for greater use of PITNDPS and for a complete roadmap from investigation to conviction, prepared with public prosecutors. He asked for a dedicated campaign to deport foreign accused in India and blacklist them so they cannot return, and said fugitives supplying drugs to India from abroad should be caught and brought before Indian courts.
For newer threats such as synthetic drugs, diversion of precursor chemicals, the dark net, crypto, dead-drop delivery systems and international drug networks, he suggested every state set up a team of officers who think “out of the box”, with successful methods shared across the country.
‘Not even one gram’
“Our resolve should be that we will not allow even one gram of drugs to enter the country from anywhere in the world, nor will even one gram of drugs go from our country to the world,” Shah said.
He linked the campaign to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of a Viksit Bharat by 15 August 2047. India is the youngest country in the world, he said, which also makes the threat larger for it, because drugs damage the health, skills, labour and thinking capacity of young people.
Shah urged officials to meet the family of even one young person affected by drugs. He spoke of a boy who ranked in the top 10 in his Class 10 board examination and was “slowly moving towards death” while his parents watched helplessly, calling such cases a national loss.
He said the first ANTF conference had set up an institutional mechanism and the second had focused on turning it into action. The third, he said, would convert the roadmap into “a decisive battle”. Shah claimed that in the past five years the Home Ministry, with the states, had dealt with terrorism in Kashmir, insurgency in the Northeast and Naxalism, and described the fight against drugs as the most difficult of all.
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Source: Press Information Bureau release, 22 September 2026: Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah inaugurates 3rd National Conference of Anti-Narcotics Task Force (ANTF) Heads of States/UTs in New Delhi.