Kerala - Kochi   

State prisons out of the purview of smoking ban

KOCHI: Prisoners in Kerala’s jails are now free to smoke, following the State government’s recent lifting of the ban on smoking on jail premises.

This, however, has drawn the flak of NGOs that campaign against smoking. Human rights organisations call it discriminatory and retrograde in a State where smoking at public places has been banned for several years. Critics allege that the lifting of the ban was under political pressure and is with a view to helping the large number of Left cadres who serve prison terms, particularly at the Central Prison, Kannur.

In just a 10-word Government Order — GO (MS No. 145/2007/Home dated June 23 — issued by Additional Chief Secretary K.J. Mathew, the smoke ban in jails has been turned upside down. “The Government Order read above is cancelled with immediate effect,” the GO said, quoting the April 20, 2005 order, which banned smoking, as reference.

A High Court division bench had on Wednesday, while hearing a parole case, wondered whether smoking could be allowed in jails and pointed out that the court had banned smoking at `public places.’ Director General of Prosecutions P.G. Thampi told the court that those who serve solitary long-term imprisonments having a beedi could not be faulted.

The government had banned smoking in jails on a recommendation by the Director General of Police in charge of prisons. The April 20, 2005, order had noted: “Section 4 of the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition etc.) Act, 2003, prohibits smoking in any public place defined in Section 3 (1), any place to which the public have access, whether as of right or not, and included auditorium, hospital buildings, jails, etc. By virtue of this no person shall smoke in the jails also.”

Therefore, the GO said, “government is pleased to order that smoking in all jails and on jail premises in Kerala will be prohibited in order to strictly adhere to the above said provision of the Act with immediate effect.”

It is this order that the government has struck down with the one-sentence order of June 23. The High Court had in 1999 banned smoking at public places, which included hospitals and auditoriums. The Supreme Court had later upheld the ban. In view of the order lifting the ban on smoking in jails, it could be surmised that jails and jail premises do not come under the definition of `public place.’

The Kochi-based Human Rights Defence Forum is planning to challenge the order in court. HRDF functionary D.B. Binu wondered how could jails be declassified as public place when hospitals and auditoriums are reckoned as public places.

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