JOIN USAnother BJP MP Ram Prasad Sarmah waded into tobacco controversy on Friday claiming there is no proof linking cigarette puffing and cancer.
“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.
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. “It is difficult to prove, whether it (smoking) causes cancer or not. Whether smoking, tobacco is cancerous or not or whether it contains any herbal medicine also, it has to be found out. So we have kept it in the committee meeting so that doctors can come and testify as witnesses or provide chemical proof, medical proof that smoking causes cancer,” Sarmah said.
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.
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 his 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.