{"id":315131,"date":"2019-09-19T09:17:02","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T09:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=315131"},"modified":"2019-09-19T09:17:02","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T09:17:02","slug":"nirmala-sitharaman-kiran-mazumdar-shaw-in-twitter-spat-over-e-cigarette-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/nirmala-sitharaman-kiran-mazumdar-shaw-in-twitter-spat-over-e-cigarette-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Nirmala Sitharaman, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw in Twitter spat over e-cigarette ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-309139 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/nirmala.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"664\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/nirmala.jpg 664w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/02\/nirmala-300x158.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 664px) 100vw, 664px\" \/>Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday defended her decision to ban e-cigarettes. She said in response to Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who questioned why the ban on e-cigarettes approved on Wednesday by the cabinet, had not been announced by the Health Minister.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">It began with Shaw in a tweet wondered why the decision on e-cigarette ban came from her and not Health Minister Harsh Vardhan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">&#8220;E-cigarettes banned, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman &#8211; should this not come from the Minister of Health? How about banning gutka too? How about MoF announcing some fiscal measures to revive economy?&#8221; Shaw tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Nirmala Sitharaman responded with a series of tweets, defending her decision.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cKiran ji, a few things. This press conference was dedicated to Cabinet decisions. I began by saying that I was there in my capacity as Chair of the GoM which has dealt with the matter. @drharshvardhan is out of country for an international meet, Sitharaman said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">She further said, \u201cCabinet Minister\/s join @PrakashJavdekar, the I&amp;B Minister, when required. Health Secretary was also with me, explaining details. These are protocols, as you know, which govt press conferences follow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cAs Finance Minister \u2014 you might\u2019ve observed \u2014 I\u2019ve been working on and regularly speaking about measures we\u2019ve been taking on matters of the economy,\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Replying to Sitharaman, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said: &#8220;I now understand, and I stand corrected. Thanks for explaining my confusion. Really grateful for your response.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On Wednesday, Sitharaman said that the Cabinet had decided to ban e-cigarettes as they pose health risk to people, especially the youth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday defended her decision to ban e-cigarettes. She said in response to Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, who questioned why the ban on e-cigarettes approved on Wednesday by the cabinet, had not been announced by the Health Minister. It began with Shaw in a tweet wondered why the decision on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":309139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[11812,4753],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315132,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315131\/revisions\/315132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/309139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}