SC Favours 85% Pictorial Warning on Cigarette Packs, Tobacco Products

New Delhi: Underlining that "health of a citizen has primacy", the Supreme Court, on Monday stayed an order which had quashed the rule for 85% pictorial health warning on cigarette packets and other tobacco products.

The bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, held that business considerations will have to give way to issues of health, more so when the activity in question may lead to "destruction of health".

The bench stayed the Karnataka High Court order that had quashed the 2014 rule for 85% pictorial health warnings on the ground that it lacked any basis or scientific reasoning. The HC had also said that such pictorial health warning should be reduced to 40%, as it was earlier.

But the Court allowed the request made by Attorney General K K Venugopal, that public health consideration warranted an immediate stay of the HC order.

"Keeping in view the objects and reasons of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 2003 and the measures taken by the State, we think it appropriate to direct stay of operation of the judgment and order passed by the High Court of Karnataka," ordered the bench.

It added: "Though a very structural submission has been advanced by the learned counsel for the respondents (tobacco companies) that it will affect their business, we have remained unimpressed by the said proponement as we are inclined to think that health of a citizen has primacy and he or she should be aware of that which can affect or deteriorate the condition of health".

The Court will now hear the case on March 12.

The High Court of Karnataka last month struck down the central government rules requiring 85 per cent of a tobacco pack's surface to be covered in health warnings. The rules had been in force since 2016.

An RTI reply from the government convinced the Karnataka High Court that the ministry lacked reasons why the pictorial health warning should cover 85% and not 40%, as it was before the 2014 regulation, and hence the regulations were quashed.