Tobacco row: Will Modi clean filth coming from mouth of his partymen, asks Shiv Sena

Mumbai, April 7: Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over controversial comments made by his Ministers and MPs, BJP alliance partner Shiv Sena on Tuesday said that in his ‘Swachch Bharat' campaign, he should focus on cleaning the filth created by his parliamentarians.

"PM Modi must cleanse his party leaders under his flagship Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan," Party's mouthpiece Saamna was quoted as saying in media reports.

The editorial also attacked BJP MP Dilip Gandhi who recently created controversy by saying that tobacco does not cause cancer.

Taking a dig at Gandhi, who heads the parliamentary panel on subordinate legislation on tobacco, the editorial in Saamna said the BJP MP should be given a Nobel Prize for his comments.

Gandhi, head of Parliamentary panel on subordinate legislation examining the provisions of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003, had recently said there was no Indian study to confirm that use of tobacco products leads to cancer.

He had said that all studies in this regard have come from abroad and one should consider the Indian aspect too.

"All agree on the harmful effects of tobacco. But there is no Indian survey report to prove that tobacco consumption leads to cancer. All the studies are done abroad. Cancer does not happen only because of tobacco. We have to study the Indian context, as four crore people in states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are dependent on bidi-making through Tendupatta," Gandhi had said.

OneIndia News