October 19, 2005: CHANDIGARH:- Late night on Oct. 18 we were alerted about the award function by the tobacco company "Godfrey Phillips India Ltd"  which was scheduled to start by 07:00 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2005. We came to know that the Governor Haryana, the CM and the Deputy Chief Minister are going to be the chief guest and guests of honour.

Once again it was a matter where the enforcer of the law were themselves breaching it. We weighed our options and instead of acting at street level we decided to act at a higher level.

Since all the laws are in place and it is only the question of effective and sincere implementation so we thought it more fitting to sensitize  all the concerned officials (at the first stage itself) who were likely to participate.

We approached the governor, the Haryana Chief Minister (CM), Deputy CM, Director of Health, the Administrator of Chandigarh and others much before 2:00 p.m. on 19th Oct. A written communication was sent to everyone. We also lodged a complaint under Section 5/22 of the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Act 2003 with the Chandigarh police.

Despite all this the Governor went ahead and attended the function, the administrator and the director of health failed to act and the police also kept quite. Though the CM and the Deputy CM of Haryana did not attend the function but still because of the Governors presence we felt cheated and disillusioned.

It is worth mentioning here that the Government of Haryana is not following the provisions of FCTC or the Indian legislation on tobacco. Haryana Government has not even notified the Indian legislation and since last many years a lot of Haryana bureaucrats and politicians are enjoying the hospitality of the tobacco industry. The present Governor is the latest in the series. The Governor of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and the Vice President of India are the other constitutional heads who have participated in such a function earlier this year.