The Supreme Court was today assured by the Union government that all cigarette packets will carry pictorial warning from May 31, 2009, that smoking is injurious to health.
Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium today gave an undertaking to this effect to a bench comprising Justices B N Agrawal and G S Singhvi that government will make it mandatory for all tobacco companies to display pictorial warning on the packets of their products with effect from May 31, 2009.
Yesterday, the apex court had pulled up the Union government for dragging its feet on the issue of implementing its own decision to display pictorial warning on cigarette packets to depict the ill effects of smoking on human health.
The petitioner, NGO Health for Millions had earlier pleaded before the court that the government was not implementing the decision of pictorial warning under pressure from tobacco lobby and was not concerned with the health of the people of the country and WHO statistics have revealed that over a million people die every year as a result of passive smoking.
The government has enforced a ban on smoking in public places from October 2, 2008. The petitioner was pressing for display of pictorial warning on the grounds that vast majority of the people of the country was either illiterate or less educated and therefore pictorial warning on cigarette packets will be more effective than the written warning.
The apex court today recorded the undertaking given by Mr Subramanium on behalf of Union government.
Union Health Minister A Ramadoss has been conducting systematic campaign against the evils of smoking.
The apex court had yesterday directed the Centre to produce the minutes of the meeting of the Group of Ministers held in February this year in which the issue of pictorial warning was diluted.
The pictorial warning will be on 40 per cent space of the packet of cigarette.
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