In three days, three BJP MPs have made shocking comments about tobacco and its links to cancer.

It started when BJP MP from Maharashtra Dilip Gandhi said on Tuesday, "All agree on the harmful effects of tobacco. But there is no Indian survey report to prove that tobacco consumption leads to cancer. All the studies are done abroad. Cancer does not happen only because of tobacco. We have to study the Indian context, as four crore people in states like Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh are dependent on bidi-making through Tendupatta."

As if this statement made by Gandhi wasn't enough, the very next day, Lok Sabha MP from Allahabad Shyam Charan Gupta said, "I can produce a lot of people in front of you who are chain smokers of beedi and till date they have had no disease, no cancer. You get diabetes due to eating sugar, rice, potatoes. Why don't you write warnings for all these things as well?" Gupta happens to be a beedi baron back home.

And on Thursday, BJP MP from Assam, Ram Prasad Sarmah said, "Whether or not tobacco causes cancer, is debatable."

Their ignorance, whether deliberate or genuine, about the ill-effects of tobacco is not the only thing the MPs share. They also happen to be members of the parliamentary committee on subordinate legislation, which is deliberating on tobacco policy.

If only the three BJP MPs had done a little homework, that apart from foreign studies, several Indian studies have reflected the dangerous results of tobacco intake.

In 2004, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare had published a report 'Tobacco Control In India'. It said 'Cancers of the bladder, cervix, oesophagus, kidney, larynx, lung, oral cavity and pharynx, pancreas, stomach and leukaemia' are possible consequences of tobacco intake.

The report further explains that "In India, where tobacco is smoked, chewed and applied in a wide variety of ways, a considerable number of research studies have shown that these forms of tobacco use are causal risk factors for many types of cancers and other diseases."

According to this report, in a country like India where beedi smoking and tobacco chewing are common habits, major effects of tobacco are seen in the oral cavity, pharynx and oesophagus. This accounts for a large proportion of the tobacco-related cancers in the country.

The report also suggests that the relative risk for death due to tobacco use from rural India is 40% to 80% higher for any type of tobacco use. Overall, smoking currently causes about 700,000 deaths per year in India. Another important observation made by the report is that mortality rate for beedi smokers is higher than that of cigarette smokers. (Read the full survey here)

Another survey conducted by Ministry of Health in 2009-2010 was the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS). The cohort study from rural India estimated the relative risk of death due to tobacco use to be 40-80 percent higher for any type of tobacco use; 50–60 percent higher for smoking and 90 percent higher for reverse smoking; and 15–30 percent higher for use of chewing tobacco in males and females respectively and 40 percent higher for chewing tobacco and smoking combined. It stated that nearly half of cancers among males and one-fourth of cancers among females are tobacco related.

Both reports, which emphasise a strong link between tobacco and cancer, would only serve to hurt the interests of a bidi baron like Shyam Charan Gupta

The government, on March 31, deferred its October, 2014, decision to increase the size of pictorial warnings on tobacco products. This happened after the committee on subordinate legislation had asked the government to defer the matter, following representations from tobacco companies. One of those representations was from the committee's own member, Gupta, an MP and a bidi baron himself.