2,000 acres of cannabis cleared in Boudh drive by 5 November
Police, excise and forest teams had cleared illegal cannabis on 2,000 acres in Boudh district by 5 November 2026 as the annual November-to-February eradication drive continued. District police put earlier clearances at nearly 10,000 acres in 2024 and 15,000 acres in 2025 and expected the current drive to reach 10,000 acres by the end of November.
🇮🇳 Boudh district, Odisha · India
Area
809.4 ha
Every year between November and February, police, excise and forest personnel
carry out extensive operations to find and destroy illegal cannabis plantations
across Boudh district.[1]With the annual eradication drive already under way,
another 2,000 acres had been cleared in Boudh district as of 5 November 2026.[1]Officials expected the area cleared to touch 10,000 acres by the end of the
month.[1]
District police data put the area where illegal cannabis was found and destroyed
at nearly 10,000 acres across different police-station jurisdictions in 2024.[1]That figure rose by 50 per cent to 15,000 acres in 2025.[2]The accounts
say growers increasingly use remote and inaccessible forest areas for
concealment, making cannabis cultivation a significant contributor to forest
degradation in the district.[1]
During his 5 November visit to Boudh, Inspector General of Police Himanshu Lal
called for strengthening the Anti-Narcotics Task Force and held a joint meeting
with police, district administration, excise and forest departments on a
coordinated strategy to rid Boudh and Odisha of illegal narcotics.[1]The
initiative is in line with Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s target of making
India drug-free by March 2029.[2]An additional five platoons of police
personnel have reportedly been deployed to intensify the crackdown.[1]
No figure for the number of plants destroyed or the weight of cannabis from the 2,000 acres was published.
No arrests, charges, named suspects or court outcomes were reported for the current drive.
5 November 2026 is the as-of date for the 2,000-acre clearance, not necessarily the day the fields were destroyed; 12 November 2026 is the publication date.
The 10,000-acre end-of-November expectation is a forecast whose outcome was not reported.
Both accounts reproduce the same district-police account, so there is no independent field confirmation of the acreage.
Green Gold or Green Loss? Boudhagada battles cannabis boom (Dinalipi) could not be opened again to check its quotations (the browser could not load the submitted public page; archived fallback unavailable (no accessible Wayback capture was found). No AI research was started); what it says is as the AI read it.
Tripura Police destroyed more than 20,000 cannabis plants in the protected Neramura forest and seized 355.5 kg of dried ganja from Batadola forest land in a second operation the same day. Police valued the ganja at about Rs 1.78 crore and said no one had been arrested.
Police in Udaipur district uprooted and seized 779.79 kg of green ganja plants grown illegally in the hills at Khara Kupiya, Mandwa. Three NDPS cases were registered at Mandwa police station against three residents and investigation began.
Police destroyed 467 cannabis plants growing in a villager's house compound at Binayipur in Nabarangpur district, Odisha, and arrested him. The Nabarangpur police registered a case under the NDPS Act, and a sub-divisional police officer gave the account of the raid to reporters.
Sepahijala superintendent of police Bijoy Debbarma said joint police, Tripura State Rifles and BSF teams destroyed at least 1.5 crore ganja plants in Sonamura subdivision over the past year, causing an estimated Rs 1,000 crore loss to the illegal trade. He said the crackdown lay behind a 2 November attack on a BSF team at Ashabari, after which police have arrested 21 people.
