Former union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss on Friday asked the Centre to raise pictorial warnings on tobacco products. He said the warnings should be increased from 40 per cent to 80 percent.
Objecting strongly to the NDA Government's decision on Thursday to stay a move to increase the size of pictorial warnings on tobacco products following a parliamentary panel's assertion that it needs more time to deliberate on the issue, Ramadoss also voiced his concern over the presence of "Beedi Baron" Shyam Saran Gupta in the panel, maintaining that it was a clear case of a conflict of interest.
He said that Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan needed to take immediate action in the matter and remove Gupta from the panel that was deliberating on tobacco-related issues.
Ramadoss said that it was wrong for Gupta to state that one's health is not affected at all by smoking.
"I can produce a lot of people in front of you who are chain smokers of beedi and till date they have had no disease, no cancer... You get diabetes due to eating sugar, rice, potatoes. Why don't you write warnings for all these things as well," said Gupta, a Lok Sabha MP from Allahabad.
Panel head Dilip Gandhi also attracted controversy by his remark that there was no Indian study to confirm that use of tobacco products leads to cancer.
Gupta was roundly criticised by opposition parties, including the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the CPI-M which alleged that there was a "conflict of interest" as Gupta was in tobacco trade and also a member of Parliamentary Committee of Subordinate Legislation looking into the rules regarding tobacco sale in the country.
Incumbent Health Minister J P Nadda has insisted that the government is committed to its stand on increasing the size of pictorial warning and curbing tobacco consumption in all its forms and have informed the panel on the same.
"The committee has said that they want to deliberate it further. They have asked for more time for deliberation. Till that time, the warning which was to come up on advertisement and on the packets has been stayed," he had said.
"But the health ministry, when it went to the Committee, whatever we have said, we are firm on that. We have pleaded that there was a necessity for this (warnings). Health Ministry is very much on its stand," Nadda said.
The debate over pictorial warnings on tobacco products has gained steam after Sunita Tomar, the poster woman for anti-tobacco drive in India who died on Wednesday after fighting a long battle against cancer, had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue two days before her death.
Tomar, who was the mother of two, said, "When I started consuming tobacco, there was no warning on its ill effects. I did not know that tobacco chewing would lead to cancer and spoil my life. Doctors say though I have been cured, the oral cancer can strike back. After being through the pain, I decided to warn other users through my experience."
In the letter, Tomar had expressed her unhappiness on Gandhi's statement. Her views are being echoed by doctors, public health advocates and tobacco control activists from across India, who too are shocked by what Gandhi said, that there are no studies in India that have examined the ill effects of tobacco on people's health.
The Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation is examining the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003.
