Bengaluru: State revives war on tobacco products

Bengaluru: In 2015, on the occasion of World Head and Neck Cancer Day, Karnataka Home Department with the technical assistance from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) launched the first of its kind website to monitor the implementation of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) in the State. The web portal www.cotpa.kar.nic.in was solely launched to act as a centralized platform for the COTPA implementation data from different departments.

This data is crucial to review the COTPA implementation and appraise the government to come up with time-to-time policies to curb tobacco usage. Karnataka was the first State in India to launch the website to track COTPA violations. Since 2019, health department through its Districts Tobacco Control Cell is the only department which has been reporting COTPA implementation data on NIC. The Hans India through its article titled 'Activists in Karnataka fight for regulation of tobacco' on 26 August 2020, highlighted that the website had turned redundant.

Reacting to this, the police department took the initiative and re-initiated the process of reporting COTPA implementation data on the portal from September. State Police Headquarters here wrote to all its district SPs and commissioners in August to re-initiate the reporting process. As a positive development, 19 districts have started uploading the data. Alex Rodrigues, CEO of Movement for Alternatives and Youth Awareness (MAYA), a Bangalore-based NGO working towards Public Health and Women Empowerment, said "It is a welcome development that the police have re-initiated the process of uploading data on NIC portal. Karnataka is spending nearly Rs 1,000 cr annually on treatment of tobacco-related diseases and one of the sole intentions of the NIC website is to have proper data to bring down the burden."

"With the re-initiation of uploading data, Karnataka government would have proper data on hand to formulate policies to curb tobacco usage and reduce the burden of tobacco-related diseases," Rodrigues opined.

"Other departments like KSRTC, education, rural development are also implementing COTPA act in their respective jurisdictions. It will be great if these departments too upload data on the NIC portal".