Kabaddi has been used as a frontline message in Punjab's anti-drug campaigns for several years, and the latest example arrived at a Border Security Force campus in Ajnala this week. The BSF, in collaboration with the Sports Authority of India, has launched the Spandan League-2026 men's kabaddi championship at its facility in the border sub-division near Amritsar, with 325 players and officials taking part across 16 junior teams and 11 senior teams.
The Inspector General of BSF (Punjab), Dr Atul Fulzele, inaugurated the championship in a ceremony attended by senior BSF officers and Sports Authority officials. Among the attendees were SS Chandel, Deputy Inspector General of BSF (Amritsar), and Ankit Goyal, DIG of BSF (Gurdaspur).
Fulzele opened the event with a fair-play pledge for the assembled players and used the platform to underline the social campaign the league had been organised around.
"Sport is a powerful tool for fitness, national integration and building a drug-free society," he said in his address to the players and the crowd.
The Ajnala campus, sitting close to the international border with Pakistan, has long held a community-engagement role for the BSF in Punjab. The Spandan League positions kabaddi specifically at the centre of the force's outreach into the surrounding villages — a deliberate choice given the heritage of kabaddi as a Punjabi sport with cross-village competition embedded in local culture.
The league also speaks to a broader campaign that has been running across Punjab for several years. The 'Nasha Mukti' drug-free awareness initiative has been backed by state government and security agency programmes alike, with sport competitions serving as the recruiting line for at-risk young people in the border districts. Kabaddi, with its physical contact and team format, has been one of the more visible vehicles for the message.
For the BSF, the championship runs across 16 junior and 11 senior teams. The junior bracket pulls in younger players from Punjab's school-age kabaddi pool, while the senior teams represent BSF and visiting amateur kabaddi units. The total scale of 325 participants is a meaningful number for a security-force-organised tournament and reflects the depth of Punjab's amateur kabaddi base.
Alongside the league launch, the BSF Inspector General also inaugurated a Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana Kendra at the Ajnala campus. The Janaushadhi outlets, run under the central government's affordable medicines scheme, provide quality generic drugs at reduced prices. Co-locating the medical outlet with the kabaddi championship places both the health-services campaign and the sports campaign at the same physical campus over the tournament's run.
The Spandan League is the latest in a wave of regional kabaddi competitions launching across India this year. In Kashmir, the Pulwama Kabaddi League opened earlier this month with similar anti-drug messaging at its core. In the eastern states, the JBC Kabaddi League is preparing a five-team competition across Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. The Asian Kabaddi League will launch a professional women's competition with Sony Sports broadcast in August.
What makes the Spandan competition different is that it does not exist primarily as a feeder pipeline into the Pro Kabaddi League. It exists as a security-force community programme, with the league format providing the platform for the broader messaging the BSF wants to deliver. The fair-play pledge, the drug-free society call, and the co-located medical outlet are the policy of the event.
The Spandan League will run across multiple days at the Ajnala campus before knockouts, with details about the senior winners and the junior champions to be announced after the final.
