Nagpur, Dec 15 (IANS): The Maharashtra government has formed a specialist 'Anti-Narcotics Task Force' (ANTF) to tackle the drugs menace even as drugs of around Rs 50,000 crore value have been seized so far in the recent times, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said here on Friday.

He told the Assembly that Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently directed that the fight against drugs would be a combined effort and not state specific.

Accordingly, Fadnavis said that district-level coordination committees under the respective Collectors have been formed, and now the state is taking action against drugs almost every day.

Though he said exact figures are not available, he estimated that the figure of seizures may have crossed Rs 50,000 crore, while replying to a question on the drug Mafiosi Lalit Patil case.

Raising the query in the Assembly, opposition Nationalist Congress Party-SP member Rohit Pawar sought to know details of Patil’s arrest and the alleged role of government officials in it.

He cited that some news reports claimed narcotics worth Rs 100,000 crore have been seized in Gujarat, but in Maharashtra the figure was just Rs 300 crore, to which Fadnavis said the seizures in this state amount to around Rs 50,000 crore.

He added that all states were sharing intelligence on drugs, and in Mumbai alone the city police have quietly acted against more than 2,200 stalls that were peddling drugs outside schools or colleges. At other places a pattern has emerged in which closed factories are being used to manufacture drugs using chemicals, and the authorities are also eyeing chemical sales in the state.