The mayoral council of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will on Wednesday take up the proposal to ban hookah bars in the city, officials of the civic body said.
Mayor Firhad Hakim had on December 2 said all hookah bars would be banned, but there was no notification backing the verbal statement. Once the mayoral council approves the proposal, which is likely to be a mere formality, the proposal to ban hookah bars will get an official seal of approval.
The proposal that will be taken up by the mayoral council on Wednesday calls for a ban on all existing hookah bars in Kolkata with immediate effect.
The proposal, which The Telegraph has gone through, adds that mushrooming of hookah bars has become a “grave health concern as more and more members of the younger generation are being dragged into this form of addiction”.
“The proposal to ban hookah bars will come up for consideration in the mayoral council meeting on Wednesday,” said an official of the KMC.
The health department of the KMC is of the opinion that smoking in any form — cigarettes/bidis/hookahs — causes serious health problems, the proposal says.
While verbally announcing the ban in December, Hakim had said the KMC received many complaints about hookah bars. “We have heard that in some hookah bars drugs are used. Our young generation is getting addicted to hookah bars,” he said.
Officials of the KMC had said licences to run only hookah bars were never issued. Some cafes and restaurants were given an additional licence to serve hookah to customers.
KMC officials said only a few such licences were issued and most hookah bars ran without any permission.
Since the mayor’s announcement in December, the KMC stopped issuing any fresh hookah bar licence. But it was in a spot regarding what to do with the licensed hookah bars.
Once the mayoral council approves the proposal to ban hookah bars, the KMC will have a legal provision to act against the existing bars.
A KMC official, however, said an amendment to the KMC act may be needed to give further legal fortification to the ban.
On Tuesday, the KMC also published a notification in some newspapers declaring that all licences issued to hookah bars stood cancelled.
The owners of several hookah bars had told The Telegraph that the majority of their income came from people ordering hookahs.