The Minister for Roads and Buildings of Andhra Pradesh Chintakayala Ayyanna Patrudu has once again courted controversy, this time by making remarks on ganja smuggling in the Visakhapatnam Agency area.

"Who exports it? Through whom does it get exported? Who are the big guns in this? How is this going to Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad? It’s an open secret among all the departments," he said, speaking to the local media in Visakhapatnam.

He stated that excise and police officials knew the people who were cultivating it and are behind the trade and that they should that file the Preventive Detention Act and push them into jails, post which there may then there may be positive results.

Making allegations against the police, he also claimed that there were reports of several incidents where police officials cooperated with ganja smugglers. A lot of youngsters from both states were getting hooked on drugs and spoiling their lives, he said.

Earlier this year, Ayyannna Patrudu made controversial remarks in relation to alleged land scams in the Vishakhapatnam area, saying "whoever migrated to Vizag were indulging in land scams," which triggered a political spat in the party. The comments were aimed at AP HRD Minister Ganta Srinivas Rao.

The scam, unearthed in June this year, included deals where records of more than a 100 complaints had been allegedly tampered with, which said that nearly 1,000 acres of land was grabbed.