With drugs emerging as a major political issue amid growing social unrest and concern across all sections of society, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Friday made the drug menace the centrepiece of her pitch to women voters, who bear the brunt of addiction in their families as mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.Addressing a gathering of women in Faridkot, the Bathinda MP said that “Maawan Dheeyan Di Fauj” had started recording the names of drug traffickers and those shielding them, all of whom would be taken to task once the SAD formed the government in the state.“The women of Punjab have decided. Enough is enough. They have taken the war against drugs into their own hands,” she said. She announced that the forms being filled in by the outfit would be taken up for action by a task force headed by a woman DGP.“I assure you that drug traffickers and their bosses will no longer remain in your midst,” she said, adding that the party would enact a law to ensure that they remained in jail for ten years without the option of bail and that all their properties were seized. “Only then will we rest,” she said.Accusing both the previous Congress government and the AAP dispensation of betraying women, Harsimrat said that both had promised to end the drug menace within months and provide jobs but had done nothing.She termed it shameful that Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, after pushing Punjab into debt of Rs 5 lakh crore and spending Rs 6,000 crore on self-publicity, was trying to buy women’s loyalty by offering them Rs 3,000. “Don’t be misled by such devious tactics. Even under the Rs 1,000-per-month scheme, you are entitled to receive Rs 60,000, not Rs 3,000,” she told the gathering.Citing figures, she claimed that Punjab ranked first in drug trafficking and second in drug overdose deaths under the AAP government. The government’s seriousness could be gauged from the fact that it had ordered preventive detention in only seven cases under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (PIT-NDPS) Act, despite registering 2.17 lakh offenders, she alleged.“The Act could have been used against drug lords who operate through proxies and those who repeatedly seek bail, but the government failed to do so,” she said.Replying to a media query, she dismissed the Chief Minister’s claim that his OSD, Rajbir Ghuman, and other middlemen had received a clean chit from the CBI. “If this is so, they should have appeared before the CBI to claim the clean chit instead of running away and approaching the courts for relief,” she said.Alleging that the entire Chief Minister’s Office was “a den of corruption”, Harsimrat claimed that a recent ED investigation had “proved” that plum civil and police postings were being sold for crores of rupees. She also alleged that the Chief Minister’s wife, Gurpreet Kaur Mann, had negotiated a Rs 5 crore deal with a serial rapist to secure his release from jail. “Such persons cannot be trusted with the reins of the state,” she said.