60 cigarettes a day didn’t kill someone I know: BJP MP

New Delhi: A BJP Parliamentarian from Assam says that anyone who believes that smoking causes cancer should consider this - "I know two elderly people who drank a bottle of alcohol and smoked 60 cigarettes every day. One is still alive, the other died at 86."

Evidence, according to Ram Prasad Sarmah, that "Whether smoking causes cancer or not is debatable."

Mr Sarmah, 60, has become the third Parliamentarian in as many days from the ruling BJP to side with the tobacco industry. All three law-makers are part of a Parliamentary committee that is reviewing the government's new plans to discourage smoking.

The chief of the committee, Dilip Gandhi, said on March 31 that there is no local evidence that correlates cigarettes with cancer. 24 hours later, Shyam Charan Gupta argued against tough curbs on tobacco firms, declaring, "sugar causes diabetes...do we ban it?" He also denied that his ownership of a beedi (hand-rolled cigarettes) empire that's worth hundreds of crores may have influenced his opinion. Next up was Mr Sarmah who says it's also worth considering whether "herbal medicines" can alleviate any downside to smoking.

Ministers in the Union government have disagreed with the trio of law-makers from their party who say that the parliamentary committee that they're a part of needs proof and "not hearsay" on the damages inflicted by tobacco.

The committee has handed a major break to tobacco firms by declaring that it needs more time to review the government's plans, announced late last year, to enforce larger pictorial warnings.