Centre to introduce pesticide management bill in Parliament

New Delhi : The Union Government on Wednesday passed pesticide management bill, 2020 which aims at regularizing the pesticide business and compensate farmers' business in case of losses occurred due to the use of agro chemicals during farming.

"As far as farmers are concerned, that is our primary concern. The Pesticides Management Bill will be introduced in this session. Today the pesticide business is regulated by 1968 rules which have become age-old and need immediate rewriting," Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters.

He also claimed that the farmers will now be able to get all information as the data will be on the public platform and will be available in all the languages. "More importantly he will know about the strength and weakness of pesticides, the risk and alternatives and this will be an open data in digital format also," he said.

A draft of the new pesticide bill was presented in February 2018 and it aimed to replace the existing Insecticides Act of 1968. In the bill, penalties of Rs 50 lakh or a jail term of upto five years are imposed in case of excess sale of pesticides. It is not clear if this has been kept in the bill.

"If there is any loss because of the spurious or low quality of pesticides then there is a provision for compensations. This is the unique feature of this Bill. If required, the government will form a central fund which will take care of compensation," Javadekar said.