New Delhi, Jan. 15: Frame rules against smoking in public — then puff away.

Maintenance officials have found dozens of cigarette butts and bidi-ends littering the corridors of the department of legal affairs, months after India introduced a smoking ban in public places drafted with the department’s help.

The discovery of the stubs has embarrassed the department into issuing a written warning to all its officials.

“It is as though the ban never came into force in the legal affairs department,” a maintenance official said. Flower pots, corridor wall corners and toilets would be strewn with butts every single day, he said.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, a known smoker, may be glad to know he has friends in Delhi, though. The Bengal chief minister has had difficulty not only in quitting smoking in office but also in enforcing other bans to cut harmful smoke — such as a high court-dictated one on polluting autos.

The Centre introduced the smoking ban on October 2 last year, extending it to private buildings to cover all workplaces. Violation brings a Rs 200 fine.

Maintenance officials for the legal affairs department’s headquarters at Shastri Bhavan claim they kept finding bidi and cigarette butts “ever since the ban came into place”.

When the department was informed, its officials — experts at spotting loopholes — retorted that it was impossible to establish that the violators were from the department.

Hundreds of people visit government offices every day, and they often have to wait in the corridors before the official they want to meet grants them a hearing.

“Initially, we tried to brush off any suggestion of blame. We argued we could not be held responsible,” a legal affairs department source said. But by late November, the source conceded, denial had become “next to impossible”.

“It became embarrassing. It was impossible to ignore the irony: an office that helped draft a smoking ban was littered with cigarette butts.”

The written warning to all department officials stresses that government offices are public places and hints that any violation of the smoking ban could attract action over and above a fine.

A separate notification, pasted on the department’s bulletin boards, informs all officials of a nodal person they can complain to if they spot a smoking violation.