Diminish Pictorial Warnings on Cigarette Packets: Karnataka HC

National |  IANS  | Published :

Bengaluru: Karnataka High Court ordered Shrink the 2014 modified rules that authorized pictorial health warnings to cover 85 percent of tobacco product packaging space, holding that they violated Constitutional norms.
The court made it clear that the 40 percent pictorial health warning rule, which existed prior to the  rules, will be in process.
Comprising Justices B S Patil and B V Nagarathna passed the order on a batch of petitions filed by various tobacco manufacturing companies, challenging the 85 per cent pictorial warning rule notified by the Union Health Ministry.
The Rules came into effect from April 1 last year.
In last May, the Supreme Court transferred all petitions to Karnataka Court and asked it to hear and dispose them.
The court said that the Health Ministry violated constitutional norms as it was an "unreasonable restriction" on the right to do business.
As per the tobacco growers, such a rule violated the Right To Equality under Article 14 of the Constitution because there was no connection between the images and the warnings, the bench observed.
The petitioners and others challenged enforcement of the COTPA which required printing of pictorial health warnings covering 85 per cent of tobacco product packages.
The petitioners argued the rules were impractical and would boost smuggling of imported cigarettes.
The tobacco industry had said there was no evidence to show smoking causes the diseases depicted in the "extremely gruesome and unreasonable" pictures.
The bench observed that the rules cannot be made to scare people but to issue notifications. 








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