After a delay of nearly a year, the Health ministry has approved harsher pictorial warnings for cigarettes and tobacco products that will be implemented from December this year. The warnings will carry gory mouth and lung cancer pictures on cigarette packets and tobacco pouches.

The Health ministry issued a notification on Saturday to provide for strong pictorial warnings for both smoking (cigarettes, bidis, cigars etc.) and smokeless or chewing forms of tobacco products.

Submitting to the demand of the tobacco industry, however, the Health ministry said that these graphics will be changed every two years instead of every year.

The civil society welcomed the move, saying the graphics will be effective in controlling tobacco use. "The new warnings are better than the current ones. The effort has to be recognised since it took the government long to come up with the warnings," Bhawna Mukhopadhyay, executive director of Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) said.