A Bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitav Roy passed this order on a batch of petitions challenging the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packing and Labelling) Amendment Rules, 2014, notified in January this year to come into effect from April 1, 2016.
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The direction comes a month after Indian cigarette-makers halted production over government rules that require pictorial health warnings to cover 85% of the front as well as back of a pack. Instead the top court transferred all these pending cases to the Karnataka High Court for a decision. Bhati argued that even the pictorial warning at present in packets of several companies occupied less than 40 percent of one side which was mandatory as per the Health Ministry rules. The company exports tobacco and tobacco products to 50 countries across more than 70 destinations.
“We congratulate the Government of India and European nations on the development and successful legal defence of these tobacco control policies”.
“It shows that governments have the legal right to use tobacco packaging to warn people about tobacco’s harms with the objective of reducing tobacco use – which brings such a high social, health and economic burden”. The rule is that the Cigarette manufacturers had to portray bigger warnings on the packets.
It has directed the Karnataka High Court to decide the case in 8 weeks.
“As a matter of fact, prominent pictorial warning on tobacco products will enable enforcement agencies to identify illegal/smuggled cigarettes and help them to seize non-compliant products”, she pointed out.
The PIL said Allahabad High Court had recommended immediate implementation of plain packaging of cigarette and other tobacco products. This was done keeping in mind the health hazards caused by consuming tobacco. The two-judge bench said the tobacco industry “should not violate any rule prevailing as of today”.
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The rules make India’s health warning rules the toughest in the world, along with Thailand’s.
