Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday met Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and requested him for providing the Geographical Indication (GI) tag for Basmati rice produced in Madhya Pradesh. Chouhan claimed the basmati rice grown in the State was on par with that from Punjab and Haryana and five other northern States.
“We export high-quality Basmati rice to America and Canada. In the meeting with the Union Agriculture Minister, I requested him to provide our Basmati rice, a Geographical Indication tag, as we have been demanding it for a long time,” Chouhan said after the meeting with Tomar.
A GI tag is an indication used on products that have a specific geographical origin and possess qualities or a reputation that are due to the origin. Such a tag conveys an assurance of quality and distinctiveness, which is attributed to its origin.
The GI tag was for PUSA-1 and PUSA-1121 basmati rice varieties cultivated in Madhya Pradesh.
MP has been trying to get the GI tag for its basmati rice for quite some time. The state government had earlier moved the Supreme Court against the Madras High Court judgement rejecting the pleas of basmati growers and State Government challenging the exclusion of 13 districts of the state from a map submitted by the Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) for GI tags.
The matter dates back to 2008 when the Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) APEDA filed an application before the Chennai-based assistant registrar of GI seeking GI-Tag for the basmati rice.
In 2010, the State Government had opposed APEDA’s application on the ground that it had excluded 13 basmati-producing districts, following which the authority directed APEDA to again file its application along with a map clearly showing areas where the rice is actually cultivated.
However, the APEDA moved to Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) against the authority and since then the litigation in the matter is on.
Chouhan also met Union Fertilisers Minister Sadanand Gowda requesting adequate supply of Urea as per the demand during the kharif season in the State.