By Kamil Zaheer

NEW DELHI, July 20 (Reuters) - Political pressure has blocked a plan to put graphic pictorial warnings on cigarette packets, India's health minister said on Friday, seen as key in reducing the nearly 1 million deaths a year due to tobacco use.

"There has been a lot of pressure from all parties," Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters.

"The chief ministers have written, lot of ministers have come, MPs have given representations," Ramadoss said, after receiving an award from the World Health Organisation for his efforts to fight the widespread use of tobacco products in India.

Millions of Indians depend on the tobacco industry, and those involved in the sector have significant political clout in states such as West Bengal in the east and Andhra Pradesh in the south.

The Health Ministry had planned to start displaying pictures of a corpse and mouth cancers on cigarette packs from June.

The campaign included placing skull and crossbone images on all tobacco product packaging, as well as starker written warnings such as "Your smoking kills babies".

But opposition from politicians, including federal and state ministers, and some ruling Congress party MPs led a group of ministers dealing with the plan to delay and dilute its implementation.

"I am not going to backtrack, but the decision is now left to the group of ministers and I am just one of them," Ramadoss said, without giving a timetable for final approval of the campaign.

A government survey showed 57 percent of men and 11 percent of women use tobacco in some form in India, with 33 percent of adult males smoking.

RELENTLESS WAR?

The Health Ministry estimates that 40 percent of India's myriad health problems stem from tobacco use.

Ramadoss said the government planned to strictly enforce existing laws banning smoking in public places such as restaurants, bus stops and railway stations, and ensure no one smoked in any workplace including factories.

"This is the beginning of a relentless war against tobacco. I am game for the fight," Ramadoss said.

The Indian Cancer Society is unimpressed, saying the government must implement pictorial warnings immediately if it is serious about reducing deaths from smoking and chewing tobacco in a country where more than a third of people can't read.

"I think the delay is criminal," said Jyotsna Govil, an senior official of the Indian Cancer Society.

But political leaders from Andhra Pradesh, where thousands of people are employed in the tobacco industry, said the move for pictorial warnings would hurt the poor.

"We know smoking is injurious to health but putting such health symbols will hamper the job opportunities of hundreds of thousands of rural workers," said Andhra Pradesh labour minister G. Vinod.

India's biggest cigarette maker ITC Ltd <ITC.BO> said it was ready to comply with the pictorial warnings. ($1=40.30 rupees) (Additional reporting by Reuters reporter in Hyderabad)

AlertNet news is provided by