No public smoking in 9 Gujarat dists in 6 yrs

Tushar Tere, TNN, May 31, 2010, 06.56am IST

VADODARA: Believe it or not — not a single person in the capital of Gujarat, which is known to be one of the largest consumers of tobacco products in the country, and eight districts of the state has smoked in a public place in the last six years! At least this is what authorities concerned would want us to believe.

As per the reply to a Right To Information (RTI) application filed by Ashish Bhatt, the districts where no penalty for smoking in public places has been collected from 2004 include Valsad, Godhra, Dahod, Anand, Mehsana, Gandhinagar, Junagadh, Patan and Kutch-Bhuj. And what authorities in some other districts or cities have done is nothing significant (see chart). Ironically, Ahmedabad district panchayat and Rajkot didn’t reply and instead asked for more fees to provide the information.

Bhatt had asked 13 questions to the state health and family welfare department related to implementation of The Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act in February 2010. He had sought information about penalties imposed by all district authorities for smoking in public places, work done by Gujarat State Tobacco Control Cell and action taken against those violating the law.

Interestingly, most of the district authorities have replied that all the hotels, restaurants and movie-halls in their jurisdiction have put up signboards of smoking and no-smoking areas. And, Vadodara’s district health officer has stated in his reply that there is no provision under the law to penalise owners of hotels, restaurants and theatres that don’t have separate smoking and no-smoking zones. “The replies show how the state government is lacking the will to discourage smoking in public places,” said Bhatt, who runs an NGO, Sparsh, and plans to file an appeal.