To add to chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s embarrassment, a civil liberty group has lodged a complaint at the state human rights commission against her for urging people to smoke more. The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR ) complained that Ms Banerjee’s appeal to people to smoke more so that the government could collect more revenue to for newly-constituted `500 crore corpus. The relief fund has been constituted to provide some compensation to the poorest victims of the collapsed chit fund company Saradha Group. They demanded that she withdrew her statement and offered a public apology.
On Monday, a delegation of APDR met state human commission head Ashok Kumar Ganguly and lodged its complaint. APDR secretariat member Ranjit Sur said that he believed that the comment made by Ms Banerjee amounted to violation of human rights. “The appeal by the chief minister to smoke more did not behove her high office. Her statement is not only unethical but also unconstitutional,” he added.
Mr Sur pointed out that Ms Banerjee was trying to jeopardise the health of millions of people only to bail out a discredited chit fund company. “She should immediately withdraw her comment and offer public apology,” he added. Ms Banerjee has already faced flak from the doctors for her “smoke more” comment.
While announcing the `500 crore relief fund, she had on April 24 said that the government would levy an additional 10 per cent tax on cigarettes and urged smokers to “smoke more to contribute towards the fund”.