Here's a setback for the Central government.

In a significant move, the Central government today assured the Supreme Court that all cigarette packets will carry pictorial warning from May 31, 2009, that smoking is injurious to health.

Appearing for the Central government before a bench of Justices B N Agrawal and G S Singhvi today, Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium gave the undertaking that government will make it mandatory for all tobacco companies to display pictorial warning on the packets of their products with effect from May 31, 2009.

Justice Singhvi asked the ASG, "What is the need for change? What has prompted the government to change it? The latest notification is a serious dilution of the pictorial warnings."

Earlier on Tuesday, the Court had pulled up the Central government for dragging its feet on the issue of implementing its own decision to display pictorial warning on cigarette packets to depict the ill effects of smoking on human health.

An NGO named Health for Millions had alleged that the government is working under pressure from the "tobacco lobby".

It should be noted here that more than a million people die every year as a result of passive smoking.

On October 2 last year, the government has enforced a ban on smoking in public places. The petitioner was pressing for display of pictorial warning on the grounds that vast majority of the people of the country was either illiterate or less educated and therefore pictorial warning on cigarette packets will be more effective than the written warning.

The pictorial warning will be on 40 per cent space of the packet of cigarette.