Chennai: Former central Health Minister of India Anbumani Ramadoss has alleged that the government had succumbed to pressure from the tobacco and cigarette manufacturers’ lobby to dilute the pictorial warning specifications on cigarette packets.
Addressing the media in Chennai, he said that the government has decided to have pictorial warning of 40 per cent only on retail cigarette and beedi packets and not on other bulk packages, reports IANS.
According to him, the minimum pictorial warning sign on one side of the packet is 30 per cent internationally. In India, it is going to be 20 per cent on one side as the government has decided on 40 per cent norm.
“I had recorded in the minutes of the meeting of Group of Ministers chaired by (External Affairs) Pranab Mukherjee held on February 3, 2009 that no decision on pictorial warning was taken. The minutes of that meeting seems to have be changed after I quit the government,” he alleged.
With the country in poll mode, he queried the necessity of the government in taking a policy decision changing the cigarettes and tobacco packing rules, violating the electoral conduct code and also when a case on this issue is pending in the Supreme Court.
Exempting gunny bags and other bulk tobacco packaging modes is contravention of the existing laws, Ramadoss added.
Images of skull and bones, scorpion (the zodiac sign for cancer), lungs are some of the pictorial warning options. The new rule is expected to come into effect from May 31 onwards.
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