Smoking CM making KOLKATA lose aid
Shocking as it may sound, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's smoking habits are making state capital Kolkata lose out on "millions of dollars" in international funds to fight the tobacco menace. "I myself formulated two applications on behalf of Kolkata to fund the city to curb tobacco consumption and make it a smoke-free zone. But both were rejected by the Bloomberg Initiative as the administrative head himself smokes in public," said a senior World Health Organisation (WHO) official. Within the last six months, Kolkata's application for a grant to control tobacco consumption has been rejected by the Bloomberg Initiative, a global programme to reduce tobacco use in low and middle income countries. "The grants that Kolkata is losing out are in millions of dollars," the official said. In the last couple of years, the eastern metropolis has lost out to other Indian cities at least thrice. Incidentally, in West Bengal, a high 70 per