New Delhi, May 28 (IANS) After a delay of nearly a year, harsher pictorial warnings for cigarettes and chewing tobacco products have been approved by the health ministry to be implemented from December this year.

Warnings will carry gory pictures of mouth and lung cancer.

The health ministry Saturday issued a notification to provide for strong pictorial warnings for smoking (cigarettes, bidis, cigars etc.) and smokeless or chewing forms of tobacco products.

A set of four pictures each of lung and oral cancer have been notified and will be carried on all tobacco products from Dec 1 this year. The warnings will be rotated every two years.

Four new pictorial warnings on smoking tobacco packs are comparatively milder, three of them showing X-ray depiction of human lung with cancer. The fourth shows mouth cancer in an advanced stage.

The pictures on chewing tobacco products are, however, harsher and depict extreme form of oral cancer with gory pictures of people affected with it.