More than 39,000 public meetings in roughly 17 months — that is the scale at which Punjab Police has been waging Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann's anti-drug campaign, Yudh Nashian Virudh ('War Against Drugs'), since its launch on March 1, 2025. The Chief Minister's Office of Punjab released the milestone figures on Sunday, August 9, 2026, painting a picture of one of the state's most intensive grassroots mobilisation drives in recent memory.

Classrooms, colonies, and village councils: where the campaign is fighting

The numbers break down into three distinct theatres. Punjab Police has conducted 10,605 meetings with students at schools, colleges, and other educational institutions — sessions designed to raise awareness about the dangers of drug abuse, promote healthy lifestyles, and equip young people with tools to resist peer pressure. Separately, 3,303 Sampark Meetings have been organised with a sharper focus on youth, the demographic the state government identifies as most vulnerable to addiction.

The largest slice of the outreach — more than 25,328 meetings — has been held with members of Village Defence Committees (VDCs) in rural areas and Ward Defence Committees in urban neighbourhoods. These community-watch structures, already embedded in local governance, are being repurposed as the campaign's last-mile delivery network, carrying the anti-drug message into every village and every ward.

Why Punjab, and why this model

Punjab has carried the weight of a drug crisis for decades, a problem that has outlasted multiple governments and policing strategies. When the Aam Aadmi Party swept to power in the 2022 assembly elections, CM Bhagwant Singh Mann placed drug eradication at the centre of the administration's identity — a promise that was politically necessary in a state where the issue resonates in nearly every household.

Yudh Nashian Virudh reflects a deliberate shift toward community-embedded enforcement: rather than relying solely on seizures and arrests, the campaign bets on changing social norms at the street and village level. The use of Village Defence Committees and Ward Defence Committees as outreach vehicles mirrors national-level frameworks promoting drug-free villages through local participation — but deploys them at a density that is striking even by those standards.

The numbers the government still needs to answer

Meeting counts measure activity; they do not, by themselves, measure impact. The critical data points — trends in drug seizures, addiction case loads, and rehabilitation outcomes since March 2025 — have not been released alongside these figures. The government has flagged periodic impact reporting as something to watch, and independent assessment of whether 39,000 meetings are translating into fewer addicts will be the real test of the campaign's claim.

For now, the sheer operational footprint signals that the Mann government is treating Yudh Nashian Virudh not as a seasonal drive but as a structural commitment — one that has touched every corner of a state that has waited a long time for exactly that.