Tamil Nadu commits Rs264cr to build 65-station anti-narcotics force under chief minister's direct command

CHENNAI:

Tamil Nadu's government has formally sanctioned a Rs264.14cr police architecture built around 65 dedicated "Anti-Narcotics Task Force" stations and a new state headquarters, cementing an enforcement structure that reports directly to the chief minister rather than through the conventional police chain of command.

The Government order, issued by the home, prohibition and excise department, creates 65 police-inspector-led ANTF stations — one in each of Tamil Nadu's 37 districts and 28 more spread across the state's nine city police commissionerates, with Chennai alone accounting for 12. It also sanctions a 454-post headquarters unit built around ten specialised wings, from a cyber forensics lab to a legal advisory cell, formalising what had begun as a narrower district-level initiative into what the police leadership has termed a "state-wide policing mission."

The financial sanction — Rs245.99cr recurring and Rs18.15cr non-recurring — falls well short of the Rs340.75cr the state's director-general of police had sought in his June proposal, a roughly 22 per cent trim that finance department concurrence appears to have imposed without altering the underlying structure. The gap is most visible in staffing: the DGP's revised plan had called for expanded numbers per unit, and while the government granted increases over the original announcement — sub-inspectors per station rising from two to four, constabulary from five to 20 — the sanctioned headquarters strength of 454 posts draws heavily on redeployment rather than fresh recruitment, with only 392 of those posts newly created.

The order is explicit that the 65 stations will function under the direct control of the chief minister, with an additional director-general of police — a new post, created rather than redeployed — anchoring day-to-day command at the state level. Below that officer sits an inspector-general, and beneath them a split command: one superintendent overseeing operations, cyber forensics, records and legal affairs; a second overseeing intelligence, special investigations and administration.

That structure signals an unusual degree of political ownership over a policing function, and reflects the DGP's own framing in his June letter to government: that a network of 65 police stations could no longer be treated as a "limited specialised function" reporting loosely to district superintendents, but required unified command and dedicated investigative capacity to be effective against what the order describes as an "evolving narcotics ecosystem" — spanning interstate trafficking, dark-web distribution, cryptocurrency payments and synthetic drug manufacturing.

The bulk of the sanctioned spend — Rs198.37cr of the Rs209.51cr allocated to the 65 field stations — goes toward pay and allowances for the 1,625 posts created there. The remainder covers uniforms, fuel, office rent, furniture and a fleet of 65 diesel jeeps and 260 two-wheelers. The headquarters allocation of Rs54.63cr includes Rs7.01cr in non-recurring spend on cyber lab equipment — among it licensed cryptocurrency-tracing and dark-web monitoring software, forensic imaging hardware and a drone-forensics capability — procured on contracts of one to three years.

Because the expenditure has not yet been voted by the legislature, it will initially be drawn as an advance from the state's Contingency Fund, with the DGP directed to prepare draft notes for its formal inclusion in the 2026-27 supplementary estimates — a routine mechanism in Tamil Nadu for sanctioning expenditure ahead of legislative approval, but one that leaves the allocation technically provisional until ratified.

Separately, the order directs the DGP to procure a further Rs3.07cr of computers and accessories under the central government's Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems scheme, funded outside the main sanction.

Roughly a third of the new command structure — 92 posts, including the inspector-general position, all 15 deputy superintendents and the entire 31-strong ministerial staff — is being redeployed rather than newly created, drawn from the existing Anti-Narcotics unit of the Economic Offences, Cyber and Narcotics wing (EBCID). In return, EBCID's ANTF unit must surrender 333 of its 363 sanctioned posts to government, a reallocation that in effect dismantles the state's previous narcotics-enforcement structure to build the new one.

Beyond the police architecture, the order sets out a wider anti-narcotics framework spanning four government departments: police-led supply-side enforcement, health department-run de-addiction and rehabilitation services, school and youth-engagement programmes under the education and sports departments, and community-level "drug-free village" initiatives coordinated through local bodies. Compliance is to be reviewed weekly at the district level, fortnightly by the new additional director-general, and monthly by the state's chief secretary — a monitoring cadence that suggests the government expects, and wants documented, early friction in inter-departmental coordination.