Taking a stern view of the illegal rehabilitation centres operational in the State, the Uttarakhand administration has decided to take punitive action on them. The health secretary R Rajesh Kumar said that the State government has taken a target to make Uttarakhand free from drugs till the year 2025. He said that the health department has made registration mandatory for all the drug rehabilitation centres operational in the State. Kumar said that on the orders of chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami all the rehabilitation centres are being made effective so that the drug addicts are rehabilitated and brought back into the mainstream of the society. He said that four integrated rehabilitation centres are operational in the State.

The secretary said that there were no regulations for the rehabilitation centres in the State due to which complaints of misbehaviour with the inmates were coming. The State government has now formulated the regulations of these centres. He said that now it is mandatory for all the rehabilitation centres to get registered with the Mental Health Authority. The last date of the registration is December 14. Kumar said that as of now 70 rehabilitation centres and mental health institutions have applied for registration and the process of granting interim registration is currently underway. The secretary added that all the unregistered centres will be treated as illegal and action under the provision of the State mental health care act-2017 .

 As per a report of World Health Organisation (WHO), there are about 11.70 lakh mental health patients in Uttarakhand and out of them 2,34,000 are critical patients. The mental health hospital, Selaqui, Dehradun is the only hospital in the State.

 The state also lacks the specialists dealing with mental health issues. Kumar said that the department has recently sent 30 government doctors to National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore for doing DPCP.