Date:15/09/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/09/15/stories/2005091501711200.htm

Back HC orders notice to Centre on stoppage of garlic import

Our Bureau

Chennai , Sept. 14

THE Madras High Court has admitted a batch of writ petitions challenging the cancellation of import licence of over 80 tonnes of garlic from China and separate orders detaining them in the quarantine section of the Chennai Port.

Mr Justice R. Balasubramanian, admitting the petitions by Mr P.K. Shankar and others, ordered notice to the Central Government returnable in eight weeks. The judge also permitted private notice to be served on the Additional Solicitor General of India to represent the Union Agriculture Ministry and the Regional Plant Quarantine Station.

The petitioner had lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) apprehending a scam in the "illegal detention" of his consignment.

According to the petitioner, he was issued a permit on June 7 to import 600 tonnes of garlic bulbs from a Chinese firm. On June 10, the Regional Plant Quarantine Station informed him that the permit had been cancelled as garlic import from China had been temporarily prohibited because of infestation of a fungus, `Embellisia Allii.'

The petitioner claimed that garlic imports were continuing in the Mumbai and Kolkata ports.

He said Embellissia Allii was not one of the quarantine pests with respect to garlic imported for home consumption under the Plant Quarantine Order 2003. It required to be free of smut, stem bulb nematode and onion maggot. The Union Agriculture Ministry and the Quarantine Station personnel had cleared more than 500 tonnes of garlic from July 2005 for home consumption without the "arbitrary insistence" of conditions put forward in the petitioner's case. The petitioner sought an interim injunction of the orders and for the orders to be quashed.

The petitioner said, "Quarantine station officials are deliberately discouraging import of garlic through Chennai and were permitting imports through Mumbai and Kolkata." Import should have been prohibited in its entirety if the pests were really found in the consignments, he said.