CHANDIGARH — The Punjab Government has successfully resolved a six-year administrative bottleneck by announcing that thousands of smartphones, originally intended to track malnourished children in 2020, will now be handed to disgruntled school teachers to conduct a drug census in 2026.

The 28,515 devices, which have spent the last half-decade maturing in government warehouses, were initially part of the Poshan Abhiyan scheme. However, after a series of court cases, the suspension of two IAS officers, and the realization that the target beneficiaries—12 lakh women and children—had mostly grown up or moved on, the state has pivoted to a more 'urgent' crisis.

"We are not calling it a delay; we are calling it strategic aging," said an official from the Social Security department, speaking on condition of anonymity while standing near a stack of boxes labeled 'Android 10 - Handle with Care.' "By the time we successfully navigated the procurement litigation, the malnutrition data was historical. Fortunately, we have a brand-new census starting in April that needs hardware that barely supports modern apps."

The decision follows the February suspension of senior IAS officers over the procurement lapse. Sources indicate the government realized that distributing 2020-spec phones to Anganwadi workers in 2026 would be an insult, whereas giving them to 15,000 protesting school teachers acts as a formal work assignment.

"The teachers said they didn't want to be enumerators for the drug census," the official added. "By giving them these specific phones, we ensure they spend so much time waiting for the screens to load that they won't have the energy to protest their secondary duties."

Representatives of the Democratic Teachers Front (DTF) have expressed concerns that the devices, which feature battery technology from the early Galli-Galli Sim Sim era, may not last through a single afternoon of door-to-door data entry.

In response, the Punjab Finance Ministry noted that the move is a masterstroke of fiscal responsibility. "We have successfully utilized a budget allocated during the previous administration to solve a problem created by the current one, using technology that was cutting-edge when TikTok was still legal," a spokesperson confirmed.

The government has assured the public that the 12 lakh beneficiaries originally promised nutritional tracking will be included in the new census, provided they have transitioned from being malnourished children to socio-economic data points.