Jammu & Kashmir High Court (Srinagar) — challenge to the ENDS ban (2018)
An AVI-backed public interest petition against the State of Jammu & Kashmir and the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, challenging the state's July 2017 circular banning ENDS and a May 2018 order imposing a complete ban on their sale, purchase and use across the Kashmir Division. In 2019 a distributor separately applied to intervene, arguing for regulation under COTPA instead of a ban.
Outcome: Closed once the national ban under PECA, 2019 superseded the state-level restrictions being challenged.
The petition was registered in 2018 and challenged two measures:
- the Health and Medical Education Department’s circular of 24 July 2017, which prohibited the sale, manufacture, distribution, trade, import and advertisement of ENDS; and
- the Divisional Commissioner’s order of 10 May 2018, which imposed “a complete ban” on the sale, purchase and use of e-cigarettes across the Kashmir Division.
AVI’s role. AVI prepared the challenge to the July 2017 circular, authorised a representative in March 2018 to conduct cases in Jammu & Kashmir and briefed the counsel who appeared for the petitioner. The petition was filed in an individual petitioner’s name.
On 9 April 2019 the Division Bench recorded the state’s undertaking to file its response within six weeks and listed the matter for 24 May 2019.
The intervention application. A distribution company applied in 2019 to be impleaded. It argued that ENDS are not a “drug” under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, that an executive circular cannot ban them and that they should be regulated under COTPA. It also asked the court to add the Union of India as a respondent. This was a commercial application, separate from AVI.
The case was closed after PECA, 2019 replaced the state measures with a national ban.