The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the tobacco industry to adhere to rules requiring stringent health warnings on cigarette packs to cover 85 per cent of the surface area of tobacco packs sold in India.
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. Observing that the tobacco industry owed a duty to the society, the bench said the petitioners should not violate any rule prevailing as of Wednesday.
The petitioners challenged the rules as ultra vires in the high courts of Karnataka, Bombay, Delhi and Gujarat. Except in Dharwad bench of Karnataka, they did not get relief from implementation.
The Karnataka beedi manufacturers and others moved the Supreme Court for a stay of the rules.
Senior counsel Arvin P. Datar, appearing for Tobacco Institute of India submitted that subsequent to the notification, the tobacco industry had come to a standstill and thousands of workers were rendered jobless across India. He argued that the amendment rules are ex facie illegal, arbitrary and unreasonable and had been issued without jurisdiction.
He submitted that a Parliamentary standing committee had recommended that cigarette packs should cover only 50 per cent as against the present 40 per cent but the government had notified that the warnings should cover 85 per cent of the packs. He said the rules did not empower the government to prescribe the size of the warnings.
The Act merely prescribes the warnings to be legible, prominent and conspicuous as to size and colour which is met by the warnings under the unamended 2008 rules. Senior counsel Anand Grover, appearing for Health for Millions, and counsel Prashant Bhushan, for PIL petitioner, strongly opposed grant of stay of the rules.
Taking note of the submissions, the bench in its brief order said that the petitioners should endeavour to implement the rules till the Karnataka high court, to which all petitions are transferred, rendered its final judgment. The stay granted by Dharwad bench shall not be implemented by the parties till the outcome of the petitions.
The bench asked the Karnataka high court to decide the petitions on merit in eight weeks without being influenced by the present order.
