The agency area of Visakhapatnam is famous for many things: coffee, pepper, minerals, verdant countryside, ancient tribal culture. Of course, some pockets are safe zone for the banned CPI (Maoist). And of late, it has also gained the notoriety for being the highest cultivated area for the most sought after variety of ganja crop ‘sheelavathi’ across the country. To check the cultivation and smuggling of the weed, the State government has taken a decision to eradicate the cultivation by 2019 and has been implementing a plan since September.
With the Department of Prohibition and Excise and the police forming the core team, the plan comprises destruction of crops and educating the adivasis from staying away from cultivation. Ganja is grown in eight of the 11 mandals in the agency. It is estimated that about 8,000 to 10,000 acres are under cultivation and close to 1.21 crore plants spread over 2,300 acres have been destroyed in the last three months. The destruction was taken up in three phases this year. The first was in September (8 lakh plants in 173 acres), October (12 lakh plants over 236 acres) and from November to till date (1.01 crore plants in over 1930 acres).
According to Assistant Commissioner of Prohibition and Excise SVVN Babji Rao, the quantity destroyed is close to 2,000 tonnes with an estimated value of ₹20 crore at the farmlands (estimated that the farmer is paid ₹1,000 per kg) and over ₹200 crore when it is smuggled to a city like Hyderabad, where the rate per kg is ₹10,000. “It goes up when it reaches cities like Bangalore and Delhi, where the rate per kg is around ₹15,000,” said Mr. Babji Rao. Rahul Dev Sharma, SP (Visakhapatnam), said, “We have been destroying the crop on and off in the last few years. This year, we have decided to go all out and have achieved the highest figure.”
Different routes
The enforcement and destruction of crops have been so effective that the areas have gone dry and except for a couple of raids by the Directorate Revenue Intelligence, the police and the Excise have no catch.
The smugglers are now looking for alternate routes through Odisha and Vizianagaram and Srikakulam. “They appear to be crossing the border at Muchingput mandal that borders Odisha or smuggling it out through Salur in Vizianagaram to Srikakulam. We are now focussing on those routes,” said Mr. Babji Rao.
For the first time, the Excise task force entrusted with the destruction of the crop has made deep inroads including the areas with Maoist presence, with the help of an armed team from the district police.
According to Mr. Babji Rao, the mandals of Paderu, Hukumpeta and Dumbriguda have been cleaned up by the task force this year. But we have for the first time forayed into the mandals such as GK Veedhi, Chintapalli, Pedabayalu and G Madugula. With the police cleaning up the Galikonda area of the left wing extremists, we have moved into these areas also, he said.
Future action
The Department of Excise is planning to establish five check posts in the Visakhapatnam district, one in Vizianagaram and the other four in East Godavari.
“Basically, there are five main routes in Visakhapatnam, one in Vizianagaram and four in East Godavari and the idea is to choke all the routes,” said Mr. Babji Rao.
“We also intend to use satellite imaging, drones and mechanised bush cutters to reduce human intervention,” he added.
