Civil society, industry take contrasting positions on pesticide ban order

Ahead of the Centre’s response to the Supreme Court on the decision to trim the list of 27 banned pesticides to just three, a section of the industry has questioned why monocrotophos was no longer prohibited, with the civil society wondering why the original order was reversed in the first place.

The Supreme Court on March 27 asked the central government to explain the reason behind retaining the ban on just three of the originally outlawed 27 pesticides. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud sought the government’s response in four weeks.

The court also asked the government to place on record two reports on the use of harmful chemicals and pesticides in the country. “The Union government shall place on record the final report of the Dr S K Khurana Sub-Committee (referred to in paragraph 10 of the status report) and the report dated September 6, 2022 of the committee chaired by Dr T P Rajendran (referred to in paragraph 11 of the status report),” the court said.

In May 2020, the government banned 27 pesticides considered to be hazardous to public health and safety. Following recommendations from a section of the industry, a high-powered panel was constituted by the government to understand all aspects of the ban.

The panel, it is believed, recommended retaining the ban on only three of the 27 pesticides.

A section of the pesticides industry, while demanding lifting the ban totally, has questioned the relaxation given to one of the pesticides. They also questioned the panel on whose recommendation the relaxation was granted.

It also alleged that the affected companies were not given adequate hearing of their case.

“Monocrotophos is highly toxic by all routes of exposure. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as a highly hazardous pesticide. Agro Chem Federation of India (ACFI) is not in favour of using this pesticide,” Kalyan Goswami, Director General, ACFI, told Business Standard, hinting that the pesticides ban issue was not handled well.

However, civil society activists in their petition to the court said the details of constituting such a committee are not available in public domain.

Thereafter, the Centre in February modified the ban order, removing 24 of the 27 pesticides from the list.

Kavitha Kuruganthi, a petitioner in the case and convener of Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, in a letter said 21 of these 27 pesticides were classified as “highly hazardous”, while 17 were deemed to be registered, which meant they were in use when Insecticides Act 1968 came into force and these Deemed to Registered Pesticides (DRPs) have actually not been proven to be safe by any ex-ante risk assessment.

Three of these pesticides are WHO Class Ib pesticides and 13 fall under Class II in terms of their toxicity. 

THE STORY SO FAR

Centre had banned 27 hazardous pesticides considered harmful to public health and safety, on May 2020

SC in its latest order had asked the Centre to explain the reason behind retaining ban on just three pesticides while letting the others off 

Apex court also asked the government to place on record reports on the use of harmful chemicals and pesticides in India