Two NGOs plan to petition the Supreme Court seeking a ban on cigarettes and other carcinogenic tobacco products on the ground that they are more harmful than electronic cigarettes, which the government recently banned.

Delhi-based Urja (United Residents’ Joint Action) and Hyderabad-based VchangeU are preparing the writ and class-action suit that will also demand compensation: Rs 5 lakh for those suffering from smoking-related ailments and Rs 10 lakh for those who lost an earning family member to tobacco.

An ordinance issued in September made the production, import, export, transport, sale and advertisement of “alternative” smoking devices a cognisable offence. The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the corresponding bill.

E-cigarette promoters, users and other stakeholders have opposed the move, arguing these products were far less harmful than traditional cigarettes and that the ban had been imposed to “protect” the cigarette industry.

Vijay Bhasker Yetapu, VchangeU founder-president, said the e-cigarette ban had set a precedent and opened an opportunity for anti-smoking activists.

“If e-cigarettes can be banned, so can traditional cigarettes and beedis — which are categorically agreed to cause cancer or such diseases that result in death. Health ministry figures say 12 lakh deaths are reported each year (because of) tobacco smoking,” Yetapu said.

The NGOs said advocate Prashant Bhushan had agreed to take up their case.

Bhushan said “less than 0.1 per cent of the population” used e-cigarettes and that these were “much less harmful than traditional cigarettes because they do not have tobacco or tar but only nicotine”.

“Also, this ban on alternative smoking devices seems to be helping the tobacco industry since e-cigarette users are likely to go back to traditional cigarettes. That is why the shares of tobacco companies jumped 20 per cent on this bill being passed in the Lok Sabha.”

Urja president Atul Goyal alleged that the government was, through wholly owned entities, a participant in companies that produce, promote and sell cigarettes.

“A government that profits from the sale of cigarettes, promotes addiction. In effect, it holds liability for these deaths (from smoking),” he said.

“Since the government has been earning dividends from such sale, it has a macabre but social responsibility to offer compensation.”

Goyal added: “At the outset, the suit demands that the 60 lakh people who have died during the last 5 years of this government’s tenure should be compensated.”