Seven years after an application was made
to get the ‘Geographical Indication’ tag for Indian basmati rice grown in some
States, the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) on Friday cleared the
decks for issuing the tag. The application has been mired in litigation
after farmers and exporters and Madhya Pradesh wanted to be included in the
list of States approved by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export
Development Authority (APEDA), the statutory body responsible for export
promotion and development of certain scheduled products.
Following the orders
issued on Friday by Justice K.N. Basha, Chairman, IPAB, and Sanjeev Kumar
Chaswal, technical member, Trademark, IPAB, basmati rice cultivated in the
Indo-Gangetic Plains on the foothills of the Himalayas, covering areas of the
rice grown in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Western
U.P. and two districts of Jammu and Kathua, will now be issued the GI tag.
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