Decide Banning Of 18 Pesticides In Next 60 Days, Supreme Court Asks Centre
The Supreme Court has reportedly directed the Centre to take a decision on banning 18 pesticides — already banned in other countries due to its health and ecological impacts — within the next two months. The top court has also reportedly said that if a particular pesticide is banned, then the same should be enforced within 15 days.
Farmers groups, public health experts and safe food activists had submitted to the Supreme Court that the process to phase out toxic pesticides has witnessed “inordinate delay” and has been taken a toll on farmers’ health, as reported by The Times Of India. Petitioners Kavitha Kuruganti, Ananthoo and Amar Singh Azad, who filed the Public Interest Litigation in 2017, reportedly issued a statement highlighting how the agriculture ministry was delaying the phasing out of dangerous pesticides by constituting multiple committees and not implementing its own draft notification on banning the pesticides.
Last November, reports emerged of pesticide poisoning in Maharashtra. This is when the petitioners took the matter to the Supreme Court seeking a ban on 99 pesticides that had been banned or restricted in other countries.
5 Years Too Late
In August 2013, the ministry of agriculture had constituted a committee headed by retired Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) professor, Anupam Verma, to review 66 such pesticides. The panel had in 2015 recommended that 12 pesticides be banned and 6 more phased out. The agriculture ministry had in December 2016 issued a draft notification banning the pesticides on the recommendations of the Anupam Verma committee. But after receiving comments and suggestions to the draft notification, the ministry constituted another panel headed by J S Sandhu of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) to look into the feedback and form an opinion on banning these pesticides. The petitioners, however, had informed top court 99 pesticides that were considered toxic globally should be banned. The top court had asked the petitioners to submit their representations to the Sandhu committee.
JS Sandhu retired in July 2017 and only in October 2017, the ministry of agriculture set up another committee headed by agriculture commissioner SK Malhotra.
“Our petition was filed soon after the acute pesticide poisoning incidents that emerged in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. The petition contended that even the Anupam Verma Committee’s mandate was narrowed by the government to 66 pesticides, when there are at least 99 pesticides being used in India, which have been banned or restricted elsewhere in the world. It is time now to take decisive action on removing deadly pesticides from our food and farming systems and ban all the 99 pesticides,” petitioners reportedly said in a statement.
The petitioners have in their PIL reasoned that there is enough scientific evidence on the health hazards of pesticides, on the link between its use, depression and suicidal ideation. They raised concerns with use of herbicides like glyphosate which have not been reviewed by the Anupam Verma Committee and questioned the failure of Centre and state governments in regulating pesticide use.
The SC in its latest order has reportedly observed: “As the matter is of urgent nature let recommendations be finalised by the committee expeditiously … Let report of the committee be placed before this Court.” The court will hear the case again in August, 2018.
In October 2017, over 40 farmers in Maharashtra had allegedly died and over 700 were hospitalised due to pesticide poisoning.
