THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a curious order, excise commissioner Rishi Raj Singh has set monthly quantity-wise ganja confiscation targets for all district excise officers in the state. The order issued on Monday, accessed by TOI, says that ganja of a prescribed quantity or above “should be confiscated from each district”.While 40kg is the monthly minimum target for Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kannur and Malappuram, the target for the remaining districts is 20kg. Interestingly, Idukki, which is known as one of the main hubs for ganja rerouting in the state, falls in the second category.Excise officers say that the order, the kind of which is unheard of before, hardly makes any sense. “We have heard about targets being set for the number of cases but setting quantity as a criteria is unheard of. It would be interesting to see what will happen if the target is not met,” a district excise official said. Sources said the move will lead to a surge in number of fake ganja seizures and cases.Justifying the order, Singh said that ganja being circulated in the state comes to thousands of kilograms. “Andhra Pradesh had confiscated one lakh kg last year. In our state, as per excise intelligence reports, the volume of ganja transactions is in the magnitude of thousands of kilograms. Yet our confiscation is in miniscule quantity,” he said.He added that the public perception is that Idukki is the main ganja hub but growing of ganja is more concentrated in cities. “In last one year, major ganja destructions were reported from cities like Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur,” he said.According to the excise department, a lion’s share of the illegal activities related to ganja originates from states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha. In most cases it is the migrant labourers who act as carriers for paltry amounts that get caught.Many of these carriers board Kerala-bound trains from Rayagada in Odisha and Palasa, Rajahmundry, Visakhapatnam and Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. Chaturangappara and Thevaram Medu in Idukki and Govindapuram and Gopalapuram in Palakkad are the favourite check posts for the ganja smugglers.