As the BJP’s Nasha Mukt Punjab Yatra is set to reach Amritsar, party functionaries in the district have been asked to ensure the presence of 20 to 30 families from each halqa or mandal for interaction with senior party leaders accompanying the yatra, which is focused on the state’s drug crisis.Senior BJP leaders, including vice-president Manpreet Badal, Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Minister Baldev Singh Aulakh and Delhi Environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa, will lead the yatra over the next three days in the district.“The party leaders want to interact with drug-affected families and community organisations. Every halqa in-charge and mandal in-charge has been asked to ensure the presence of 20 to 30 families. In one Vidhan Sabha halqa, there are four or five mandals,” Kanwarbir Singh Manzil, president of the Amritsar BJP (Rural) told The Tribune.“Over the next three days, public meetings will be held in each halqa, including Attari, Majitha, Jandiala Guru, Chogawan and Maqboolpura. Buses have been arranged to ferry drug-affected families for the purpose, and duties have been assigned to workers,” Manzil said.However, for residents of Maqboolpura, one of the worst drug-affected areas in the Amritsar East constituency and among the last campaign stops of the BJP’s Nasha Mukt Yatra, political campaigns have failed to deliver something they have long awaited: a real solution.Fed up with being labelled a haven for drug addicts by politicians of all hues. “The political leaders see Maqboolpura as a colony of drug addicts, which is wrong. There are many families here who are raising their kids under the shadow of drug trade and addiction, but we have managed to keep them away from this evil,” said a local resident, Jagjeet Singh (name changed), a fruit trader at Vallah Mandi.“Such comments by politicians make ordinary residents and their children appear to be drug users, while the politicians let us down and failed to offer any solution to the problem,” Jagjeet said.Another family of five, including three children aged between 8 and 15, said most families in the area did not allow their grown-up children to step outside after dark. “The drug crisis is not an election slogan or a political opportunity to seek votes. It is a question of whether our children can safely walk through their own neighborhood. “Chitte naal kharab nah hon (they must not get harmed by drugs),” said Gurdyal Singh, a mason and head of the family.People say they need both political attention and intent, but will put their foot down if they are made a spectacle of.The Amritsar police are helping out, and some NGOs now run rehabilitation centres. Earlier this month, the local police conducted a major cordon-and-search operation in Maqboolpura, reporting seizures of heroin and opium and arrests as part of a continuing crackdown.But everyone, locals and volunteers alike, knows the fight is a long and hard one.“Anyone who dares to complain or oppose the peddlers is marked for threats and harassment,” said a 25-year old resident who volunteers for an NGO and works to rehabilitate drug addicts in the area.