NEW DELHI: In a big disappointment for anti-tobacco activists, a Parliamentary committee has recommended pictorial warnings on tobacco products be reduced from the 85 per cent mandated by a notification, which was supposed to be effective from April, to 50 per cent of the display area.
At present only 40 per cent of the display area is covered with pictorial warnings. The report by the Committee on Subordinate Legislation will likely again obstruct the notification of the ministry.The report, which was tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, has recommended that only 50 percent of beedi packages be covered by pictorial warnings and that too on one side. This also includes chewing tobacco and other tobacco products namely zarda, khaini and misri.
“The implementation of such kind of rules would sound the death knell for the beedi industry and millions of people involved in this trade would become jobless and this would lead to social unrest,” the report said.
The panel’s interim report had courted controversy last year when it came to light that one of the panel’s members was a beedi baron from Allahabad.