Subscribe Now To Our Network Channels The NewsHour Debate : http://goo.gl/LfNgFF ET Now : http://goo.gl/5XreUq Times Now : http://goo.gl/U9ibPb Social Media Links :- Twitter - http://goo.gl/FzJIpz Facebook - http://goo.gl/CC7rGc G+ - http://goo.gl/O1iEp5 Also visit our website - http://goo.gl/XPUXe8 In a debate moderated by TIMES NOW's Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, panelists -- Dr Sambit Patra, National Spokesperson, BJP; Ram Prasad Sarmah, MP, Lok Sabha, BJP & Member Committee on Subordinate Legislation; Dr Ajoy Kumar, Spokesperson, Congress; Pavan Kumar Verma, MP, Rajya Sabha JD (U); Gaurav Bhatia, Spokesperson & National Head, Legal Cell, SP; Atul Kumar Anjan, National Secretary, Communist Party of India (CPI); and Ajoy Bose, Senior Journalist -- discuss the issue of Govt acting on tobaccogate report, and BJP MPs brazening it out. Amidst a raging controversy over remarks on smoking by a BJP MP who is a 'beedi' baron, another BJP MP Ram Prasad Sarmah today waded into the row, claiming there is no clear proof yet linking cigarette puffing and cancer while wondering whether tobacco contains "herbal medicine". "Whether cigarette smoking causes cancer or not, there is no full proof till now," Ram Prasad Sarmah, BJP MP from Tezpur, Assam said in Biswanath Chariali, about 75 km from Tezpur town. Sarmah, a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation which is looking into the rules regarding tobacco sale in the country, said the panel would focus on facts. Sarmah's remarks come in the back drop of a controversy triggered by 'beedi' baron and BJP MP from Allahabad, Shyama Charan Gupta, also a member of same Parliamentary panel, that a lot of chain-smokers had no cancer."I can produce a lot of people in front of you who are chain smokers of beedi and till date they have had no disease, no cancer... You get diabetes due to eating sugar, rice, potatoes," Gupta, a Lok Sabha MP from Allahabad, had said. Gupta's remarks had come barely days after the Parliamentary panel head Dilip Gandhi, also from BJP, had said there was no Indian study to confirm that tobacco use leads to cancer, leaving the government embarrassed and rival parties and the medical fraternity fuming. Meanwhile opposition parties continued to criticise Gupta's remarks with the JD(U) saying that there is a conflict of interest and questioned Gupta's continuance in the panel which has to consider issues related to tobacco. NDA ally PMK said both the BJP MPs had made "ignorant and foolish" utterances without any scientific basis and asked the Modi Government to put an end to such remarks "as the country should not be put to shame". "I mean these people should stop these silly utterances and people globally think Indian Parliamentarians have low acumen and that's not to be," PMK founder leader and former Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said. Globally-acclaimed institutions, including the Indian Council of Medical Research, had done hundreds of studies linking tobacco use to not just cancer, but to diseases related to kidney, lungs and brain as well, he noted. He alleged that people were apprehensive of a "collusion between health ministry and tobacco lobby." Ramadoss said that as Health Minister he had withstood pressure from the tobacco lobby and opposition from different quarters and got notified that 40 percent of the space on all tobacco products should have pictorial warning.

• published: 06 Apr 2015
• views: 15