‘You cannot blame one person for everything going wrong in the state’, former Punjab CM.
Chandigarh: Former Punjab Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Captain Amarinder Singh has described the allegations linking Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia to the drug trade as “speculative”, questioning whether association with people later accused in drug cases can by itself establish criminal involvement.
Captain Amarinder, while speaking to media, said Majithia had been made the main target of the political campaign over drugs, but maintained that there was no basis to blame one person for everything that had gone wrong in Punjab.
“I have said this before too. You cannot blame one person for everything going wrong in the state. And as far as Majithia is concerned, that remains speculative,” Capt Amarinder said.
He referred to Majithia’s alleged association with people in Canada and their visits to Punjab, saying that social interaction or hospitality could not by itself establish knowledge of or participation in drug trafficking. He added that direct involvement would be a different matter.
The remarks are significant because Majithia has been at the centre of Punjab’s drug politics for almost a decade. His name was repeatedly raised during the 2017 Assembly election campaign, when the drug crisis became one of the biggest political issues in the state. The allegations against him were later converted into a formal criminal case.
Majithia was booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act in December 2021. He spent nearly five months in custody before the Punjab and Haryana High Court granted him regular bail in August 2022.
The High Court’s bail order recorded that there was no recovery of narcotics from Majithia. The court also examined the prosecution material concerning alleged possession, transportation, storage and supply of drugs and concluded, for the purpose of bail, that there were reasonable grounds to believe that he was not guilty of the offences alleged and that he was unlikely to commit a similar offence while on bail.
The State government challenged the bail order in the Supreme Court. However, on April 25, 2025, the Supreme Court declined to interfere with the High Court order and dismissed the State’s challenge. The Supreme Court noted that Majithia had participated in the further investigation and that the bail granted in August 2022 had remained in force for more than two and a half years.
The Supreme Court order, however, did not amount to an acquittal or a finding that the allegations were false. The investigation and legal proceedings were allowed to continue.
What has kept the Majithia drug case politically significant is the pace of that investigation.
More than four years after the FIR, the original drug trafficking case has still not resulted in a police challan. A February 2026 media report said that the case had been investigated by multiple Special Investigation Teams, with five SITs having been constituted over the course of the investigation, but the police had still not filed a challan.
That prolonged investigation has become an important part of the political debate surrounding Majithia. His critics continue to point to the allegations and the material collected during different investigations, while his supporters point to the absence of a chargesheet, the High Court’s bail findings and the Supreme Court’s refusal to cancel his bail.
The legal record therefore presents a more complicated picture than the political allegations that have surrounded the case.
There is also a separate legal proceeding involving Majithia that needs to be distinguished from the original drug case. The Punjab Vigilance Bureau registered a disproportionate assets case against him in 2025 and filed a chargesheet in that matter. The Supreme Court subsequently granted him bail in that case as well. The financial allegations are separate from the NDPS prosecution and remain subject to judicial proceedings.
Amarinder’s Gutka Sahib pledge returns to the spotlight
Amarinder’s comments on Majithia come with his own long record on Punjab’s drug issue also coming under scrutiny.
During the 2017 election campaign, Amarinder held a Gutka Sahib at Talwandi Sabo and made a pledge to break the backbone of the drug trade if voted to power. The pledge became one of the most memorable moments of the campaign and was subsequently used by political opponents to question his government’s record.
In his latest media interaction, Capt Amarinder sought to correct what he described as a repeated misrepresentation of that promise.
He said he had never claimed that he could perform a miracle or completely eradicate drugs within a fixed period. According to Capt Amarinder, what he had said while holding the Gutka Sahib was that he would do his best to “break the backbone” of the drug trade.
After his government came to power in 2017, it constituted a Special Task Force to tackle drug trafficking. Amarinder said he specifically brought ADGP Harpreet Singh Sidhu back from Chhattisgarh to head the operation.
According to figures cited by Capt Amarinder, between April 2017 and his departure as Chief Minister in August 2021, Punjab registered 48,107 cases under the NDPS Act, arrested 62,535 people and seized 2,216 kilograms of heroin. He said these figures represented the action taken by his government against the drug trade.
The Special Task Force had begun making arrests soon after its formation. Within its first four weeks in 2017, the STF had registered 1,277 NDPS cases and arrested 1,468 people, according to contemporary reports.
Capt Amarinder also linked Punjab’s drug problem to cross border smuggling and the growing use of drones. He said he had repeatedly raised the issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Home Minister, arguing that the threat could not be tackled only through action against local peddlers.
He recalled that during his tenure, security agencies intercepted drones carrying weapons, heroin and other material from across the border. He said the nature of the threat had changed from people crossing the border physically to the use of drones to deliver contraband and weapons.
The former Chief Minister’s defence of his drug record comes at a time when the BJP has once again placed the drug issue at the centre of its Punjab campaign.
The political significance of Capt Amarinder’s latest comments lies in the contrast between the BJP’s broader campaign against drugs and his specific assessment of the Majithia case.
Capt Amarinder’s intervention ultimately brings the debate back to the evidence against Majithia. Despite years of investigation, multiple SITs and a high profile political campaign linking him to Punjab’s drug crisis, the original NDPS case is yet to produce a chargesheet. The courts have also not convicted Majithia in the drug case. For Amarinder, therefore, the allegations linking Majithia directly to the drug trade remain “all speculative”.
