Click to play videoNew Delhi: Beedi smoking has never been so tempting and it's not just because Bipasha Basu thinks smoking beedi keeps the cold away.
The veterans in the UPA Government are all on Bipasha's side in keeping the beedi flame burning.
Just a week before the deadline for implementing the controversial skull and bone warnings on cigarette and beedi packs, a Group of Ministers (GoM) has deferred it yet again, till the middle of June, supposedly because beedi workers will lose their jobs.
However, Union Health Minister, Ambumani Ramadoss disagrees saying, "I don't think that is the real reason. I think they are being encouraged and instigated by the tobacco lobby."
But, it's not just industry. The Government is equally keen on stubbing out the jolly-roger warning.
"Right from the Prime Minister's Office to other ministers, all are keen that the warning on cigarette packets does not come into effect," says an irate Ramadoss.
The man heading the GoM, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has been at the forefront of this campaign. Many say that is because his votebank in Murshidabad survives on the beedi industry.
Mukherjee's stand that the warning would hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims sounds a bit far-fetched to the Health Minister.
"What religious sentiments can it hurt? Don't you have these warnings on poison bottles and electricity appliances? Health is above all,'' says Ramadoss.
The pictorial warnings are part of the tobacco legislation passed by Parliament in 2002. The same legislation demands a ban on smoking in films.
For once, the Health Minister has been politically correct in putting health before politics and has raked up a controversy with his own Cabinet ministers.
But controversies apart, the big question now is whether the Government will buckle before the tobacco lobby or side with the Health Minister.
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