New Delhi, Dec. 2: Leading cigarette makers ITC Ltd and Godfrey Phillips India (GPI) have stopped production because of an uncertainty over the sort of pictorial warning to be carried on tobacco products starting this month.

The move may cost the state exchequer Rs 100 crore per day.

The companies have said there is no clarity on the types of warnings to be carried on the packages.

ITC, which makes brands such as India Kings, Gold Flake and Navy Cut, has stopped production at all the five units since yesterday.

An ITC spokesperson said, “Units are shut down because of the ambiguity in pictorial warnings to be carried from December 1.”

GPI has also stopped production at its two units since yesterdeay. The units make brands such as Four Square, Red and White and Cavanders.

“Yes, we have stopped production at our two units,” GPI vice-president (marketing) Neeta Kapur said.

Sources in the Union health ministry, however, described the shutdown as a “scare tactic” to build pressure to delay the new visual that shows a lip ravaged by oral cancer.

“There is no confusion — our notification stands and the new warning should be on all products manufactured after December 1,” the source said.

“Some manufacturers have probably overproduced in the final weeks of this deadline and are now waiting for the stocks to get over,” the source said.

The official said a similar trend was observed when pictorial warnings were first introduced. Some companies manufactured extra stocks and held back on production until the old stocks were exhausted.

“This time too, they hope that such a tactic may build pressure to delay the warning,” the official said.

There are two existing pictorial warnings such as a scorpion and damaged lungs while a new and stricter one — a cancer-stricken mouth — is to be depicted from December. Such warnings are to be rotated every year.

Tobacco companies had requested the health ministry that the existing cigarette stocks with the retailers be allowed to be sold first, and if the new warning must come into effect then its duration should be increased to two or three years so that companies did not need to print new packets every year.

A late night agency report says the government is “actively considering” a request from the tobacco industry to increase the duration of display of a particular pictorial warning on cigarette packets.

“While the health ministry advocates lower use of tobacco, the request of the tobacco industry is being actively considered,” sources said.

“We have not received any response so far,” Tobacco Institute of India director Udayan Lall said.

“Companies making cigarettes and bidis have been forced to close down production because of the uncertainty regarding the warning,” Lall said.

According to Lall, tobacco companies were under an impression that the December 1 timeline for putting pictures of a person with mouth cancer on product packs would get pushed back.

“There were media reports that the government was set to further delay the notified ‘mouth cancer’ picture,” he added.