-PTI   The Gujarat government has made a request to the Centre not to ban endosulfan, an agriculture pesticide found to be an organic pollutant, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Answering questions, he said production, sale and use of endosulfan has been banned by Supreme Court, through an interim order, on May 13 in the country. “What the Supreme Court said, we will oblige,” he said. In reply to...

-The Economic Times   The Supreme Court on Friday refused to ease its three-month old ban on the manufacture, sale and use of pesticide endosulfan despite an expert committee report favouring lifting the restrictions for all states except the worst-affected Kerala and Karnataka. However, a bench of Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar agreed to consider the industry's request for permission to export the...

-PTI   The Supreme Court today asked an expert panel appointed by it to explore the possibility of exporting the unused stock of endosulfan manufactured here to other countries. A bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia said the panel would also consider how much of the endosulfan stock can be exported against the orders for supply of the pesticide from other countries. It also said the committee will also look into the...

Supreme Court grants further three weeks' time to file an interim report The Supreme Court on Friday granted further three weeks' time to the Centre to file an interim report on the study by an expert committee on the harmful effects of endosulfan. A three-judge Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan, and Justice Swatanter Kumar rejected the plea of Additional Solicitor-General Mohan Parasaran seeking six weeks for submission of...

Agreement may be worked out before closure of conference   India maintained silence on listing of endosufan under the Rotterdam Convention at the fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, which opened in Geneva on Monday. The Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade requires the exporting countries of listed chemicals to provide the importing countries with advance information on...