The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday questioned Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s participation in the concluding function of the BJP’s Nasha Virudh Yatra, alleging that the scourge of illicit drugs in Punjab began during the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP government’s tenure between 2007 and 2017.Shah is in Jalandhar, where he is participating in the conclusion of the BJP’s 14-day Nasha Virudh Yatra.AAP Punjab president Aman Arora said that while the party welcomed the Home Minister to the state to show his intentions of ending the scourge of drugs, he questioned why the BJP “shielded” politicians of the then ruling SAD-BJP alliance whose names, he claimed, had come up in police and Enforcement Directorate investigations into the Rs 6,000-crore drug racket.“Your party was the crutches on which the Akali-BJP government stood. When the then ED officer took the name of a senior politician, did you get the investigators to prosecute him? Is it not true that when the investigation was nearly complete, the officer was unceremoniously transferred?” he said.Calling the years between 2007 and 2017 an era of “narco terrorism, when police, politicians and drug smugglers colluded to spread the drug menace”, Arora said the BJP never raised the issue of illicit drug trade then.“Why is it being raised now? The AAP government is fighting the menace through campaigns like Yudh Nasheyan Virudh, setting up Nasha Mukti Morcha and with an army of over 2 lakh volunteers forming Village Defence Committees, who ensure that drugs are not sold. But he (Shah) wants to defame the government that is fighting against the menace and also the Punjabis,” he said.The AAP president said that drugs were not produced in Punjab but were being smuggled either across the border from Pakistan or into the country through ports in Gujarat.“The border is secured by the Centre, still drugs are coming to the state. How can Punjab government be blamed for it? A huge cache of drugs was seized from a port in Gujarat, but strangely investigators later said that half of it was eaten by rats. We know what kind of rats would eat this, in a state ruled by BJP,” Arora said.“I only request the Home Minister to prove to the people of Punjab that there is no difference in what the Centre does and says, by aiding the efforts of AAP government to fight the menace, rather than indulging in a blame game,” he said.