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.