SC Declines Stay On Karnataka HC Order Quashing 85% Pictorial Warning On Tobacco Packets; Directs HC To Upload Judgment [Read Order]

The Supreme Court has declined the plea for an interim stay on the Karnataka High Court judgment that scrapped Centre’s regulation that packets of tobacco products, including cigarettes must carry pictorial warning covering 85 per cent of the packaging space.A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice S K Kaul yesterday asked the high court to upload the judgement on its website and. The Supreme Court has declined the plea for an interim stay on the Karnataka High Court judgment that scrapped Centre’s regulation that packets of tobacco products, including cigarettes must carry pictorial warning covering 85 per cent of the packaging space. HC on December 15 struck down the 2014 amendment rules that mandated the pictorial health warning to cover 85 per cent of the tobacco product packaging space, holding that they violated the constitutional norms. “It is submitted at the Bar that the judgment delivered by the High Court of Karnataka at the Principal Bench at Bangalore in Writ Petition No.53876 of 2015 has not yet been uploaded and that is why the present petition has been filed without the judgment seeking interim direction”, said the order.