Cigarette row: BJP tries to blow smoke

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday dismissed Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Dilip Gandhi's remarks that all studies linking cancer to tobacco have come from abroad and that there is no Indian survey report to confirm it.

"Do not listen to these things. Science is science. You cannot compromise on science," the minister said, disapproving the statement of Gandhi, who heads the parliamentary panel on subordinate legislation examining the provisions of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003.

Gandhi had on Monday said all studies linking cancer to tobacco have come from abroad and that one should consider the Indian aspect too.

Gandhi’s statement left the Bharatiya Janata Party red-faced with Javadekar facing questions at a press conference on his remarks.

The parliamentary committee, which Gandhi -- a BJP MP from Maharashtra -- heads, had "strongly" urged the government to put on hold its proposal to increase the size of pictorial warnings on tobacco packets from 40 per cent to 85 per cent.

The government notification in this regard was to come into effect from Tuesday.

The statement of Gandhi gave ammunition to the opposition Congress with its General Secretary Digvijaya Singh demanding a probe to find out whether there was any connection between the BJP and cigarette manufacturers.

"One has to do some research on the connection between the BJP and cigarette, gutka manufacturers. Then only we will find an answer... Issue is has the Congress party ever taken a decision or even initiated the procedure of removing these warnings from the cigarette packets or gutkas?... We have never done that. But here is a deliberate attempt to undo and sort of remove the warning," Singh alleged.

Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule expressed her "shock" at the remarks and termed it as "unfortunate". "I am not alarmed but I am shocked anybody can make a statement like that. It is very unfortunate... I will definitely go and talk to him because he is a very nice gentleman," she said.

"All agree on the harmful effects of tobacco. But there is no Indian survey report to prove that tobacco consumption leads to cancer. All the studies are done abroad.”

"Cancer does not happen only because of tobacco. We have to study the Indian context as four crore people in states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are dependent on bidi-making," Gandhi had said.

Monika Arora of the Public Health Foundation of India said that although the committee on subordinate legislation has made this report for the first time, earlier three reports on tobacco control have recommended that the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Product Act provisions be made stronger.

"The subordinate legislation committee of Rajya Sabha in 2013 observed that the pictorial warning needs to be 90 per cent. So all those earlier reports have not been reviewed when this committee made its recommendations," Arora said.

"There are Indian studies but the fact that cigarette smoked by people in US... would the biology not be the same... same impact not happen to Indians? Would cigarette and bidi behave differently to Indian smokers? It is common sense that anybody smoking cigarettes in other country has shown close or high association with cancer. Why wouldn't it happen with any Indian?" she asked.

Speaking on the remarks, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said first the government cut health budgets now it is openly lobbying for the corporates.

On implementation of the notification, India would have been the country with largest pictorial warnings on tobacco products in the world.

Citing an "adverse impact" on the livelihood of people involved in the tobacco industry, the panel had said a large number of representations expressing "serious" apprehensions from MPs as well as other stakeholders against the proposed notification had bee received by it.

Gandhi had also written to Health Minister J P Nadda in this regard seeking deferment of the implementation of the notification. The committee, in its report, said it "strongly urges the government that the implementation of the notification viz GSR 727-E dated October 15, 2014 may be kept in abeyance till the committee finalise the examination of the subject and arrive at appropriate conclusion and present an objective report to the Parliament".

India has the highest prevalence of oral cancer globally, with 75,000 to 80,000 new cases of oral cancers being reported every year, according to a report submitted by the ministry of health in consultation with the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare on the ill-effects of chewing tobacco.

A recent MoHFW-WHO supported PHFI study, estimated that the total economic costs attributable to tobacco use from all diseases in India in the year 2011 amounted to a staggering Rs 1,04,500 crore -- 12 per cent more than the combined state and central government expenditure on health care.