Andhra Pradesh: area of ganja cultivation shrunk from 14,000 to 800 acres in ASR district, say police

‘Waning Maoist influence, destruction of ganja crop and encouraging farmers to cultivate alternative crops are the main reasons for this’

Till about a few months ago, the newly-carved out district of Alluri Sitarama Raju, which was earlier part of the Visakhapatnam district, was termed to be the ganja capital of the country. It was said that it was the largest ganja producing district probably after Chamba of Himachal Pradesh.

But as per the latest statistics given by the district police of ASR, post the ganja eradication programme of the State Government called ‘Parivarthana’, there is huge shrinkage in the total area of cultivation in the district.

As per a conservative estimate of 2021, the weed or ganja or marijuana or cannabis was being cultivated in about 13,000 to 14,000 acres of land, across the nine Maoist-affected mandals of the district. And as per the latest survey, the cultivated area has now dropped down to about 800 acres.

It was primarily grown in the mandals of GK Veedhi, Pedabayalu, Munchingput, G. Madugula and Chintapalli. And the districts, till about a year ago, were reeling under the influence of the banned CPI (Maoists).

But since last year, the district police under the guidelines of ‘Parivarthana’ programme had taken up a concerted effort for destruction of the crop.

“We have been sporadically destroying the crop since the last few years, but since last year, we took it up scientifically after a proper drone and geo-mapping survey. We identified the major cultivating areas and took up the destruction systematically,” said Superintendent of Police, ASR district, S. Sathish Kumar.

In the last year alone the police and the Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) jointly destroyed ganja in about 7,500 acres, which was around 60% of the cultivated crop.