I refer to the report in the Business Standard of April 23, “Oncologists cry foul over lower GST for beedies”. It is quite clearly the cigarette lobby which is behind this view that beedi should be taxed to higher rate, as much as cigarettes. Every year this view is propagated before Budget and I am aware of it for two and a half decades of the same argument from the time I was Member Budget.
It is not unknown that the cigarette lobby has not exactly covered itself with glory in regard to its stand on the relation between smoking cigarette
