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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | SC raps govt on cola panels

SC raps govt on cola panels

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published Published on Feb 9, 2011   modified Modified on Feb 9, 2011
The Supreme Court today hauled up the government for including soft drink industry representatives on food standard panels intended to act on complaints against them and asked it to immediately reconstitute the committees with independent experts.

The top court has since 2004 been hearing a PIL filed by the NGO CPIL, which demanded that soft drink companies reveal the contents of their products, including pesticide and chemical contents, if any.

In 2006, the government said it was setting up food standards panels to deal with the issue, staving off imminent court intervention. The case has been pending since.

The panels were set up under the Food Safety and Standards Act by the Food Safety Authority.

Today, when arguments resumed, CPIL counsel Prashant Bhushan accused the government of packing the panels — nine of them — with representatives of Pepsi, Coke and other food and drink manufacturers.

The government said there was a “roster” and every time a complaint was filed, a panel was constituted from within the roster to deal with it. Panel members had to give a no-conflict-of-interest undertaking.

But the arguments did not impress the court.

Pepsi counsel K.K. Venugopal further angered it by arguing against court intervention. “If everything was being done as per law, any intervention by the court would amount to jettisoning Parliament.”

Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly, on the bench headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari, said: “It is the only panel which can invite reports from industry (to deal with a complaint). If it’s not independent how can it go into all this? As per Section 13(1) of the Act they have to be independent scientific experts. People from the industry can’t be there.”

The judge further said: “Venugopal has said that the court should not jettison Parliament. But the government is not doing anything. It is acting contrary to the Act. The whole process is wrong. In fact, you are jettisoning Parliament.”

The court chided the government for remaining “silent” while these “companies were selling their products”. The government has just been sitting on the matter and filing affidavit after affidavit since August 2008 when it set up the panel, the bench noted. “What work have these panels done?”

He dismissed the government’s affidavits saying such an “elaborate exercise” was not required. “You can’t have these (industry) people on the panel. This is the law. You can’t have any of these people. The whole exercise being done by these people will have no meaning,” he said.

The bench ordered the Food Safety Authority to renotify the panels to include only independent, scientific experts.

The Telegraph, 9 February, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110209/jsp/nation/story_13557020.jsp


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