Amendment to Apeda Act may delay protection of basmati rights

After Pakistan?s refusal to accept India?s offer of joint registration of basmati, under the Geographical Indications (GI), the government?s move to empower the Agricultural and Processed Food Product Export Development Authority (Apeda) for undertaking the registration process through an ordinance may be delayed for few months.

Sources told FE that the ordinance to vest Apeda with statutory powers to deal with registration and protection of intellectual property rights for basmati is with commerce minister Kamal Nath. After getting his go-ahead it would go to the Prime Minister Office and then to the President, prior to promulgation.

?As the Parliament would meet by mid-October, brining in the ordinance may raise propriety issues as an ordinance is an instrument used when Parliament is not in session,? a senior commerce ministry official said.

Parliament is expected to discuss the amendment to the Apeda Act, which seeks to bestow up on the export promotion body, the power to register basmati under GI, as it has been working for a decade to protect basmati rice through legal cases abroad.

While the Parliament is unlikely to pass the amendment in its forthcoming session, the government might bring in the ordinance after the session is over. Apeda spends Rs 3-4 crore annually in legal cases, in order to protect basmati against IPR violations across the world.

Recently, Pakistan had granted a trade mark (TM) to the basmati Growers Association (BGA), providing it with exclusivity, even as India and Pakistan had earlier agreed to jointly bid for a GI for basmati. The Registrar of Trade Mark, Karachi, while granting the TM on BGA, has set aside the opposition of Apeda through its legal council. Apeda had offered to jointly register basmati under GI along with the Rice Exporters? Association of Pakistan, which was rejected by Pakistan government.

In the absence of GI, many private companies have been unsuccessfully trying to register their products as basmati. Basmati, an aromatic long-grain rice variety grown in the Gangetic plains in India and Pakistan commands a premium price over other rice varieties in the international market.

India?s basmati exports have been rising consistently since one decade. The exports from India rose to Rs 3548 crore during 2007-8 from Rs 2482 crore achieved during the previous year.

In terms of volume, the export of basmati rice has gone up from 7.71 lakh tonne in 2003 to an estimated 14 lakh tonne in 2008. Although the land for cultivation of the notified and non-notified basmati varieties, has barely grown by 2.8% in these years.

Trade source said that drafting a common definition of basmati for GI might not be so easy for Apeda, as there states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka have started growing basmati. Since GI postulates geographic area, which is clearly defined as the Himalayan foothill in the case of basmati, the newly growing basmati states may be excluded, which may raise serious discontent among farming communities.

A commerce ministry official had earlier said that India and Pakistan jointly own the basmati rice, as it is a ?common heritage?. After filing and getting registration in GI office in Chennai, the government would initiate the process for registering in all the major exports markets like Africa, Middle East and European Union.

The products like Darjeeling Tea, Kancheepuram silk, Mysore agarbathi, Madurai songudi, Coimbatore wetgrinder and Mysore sandalwood soap have been already granted GI registration.