Based on the statistics received through RTI, agrochem industry association Crop Care Federation of India (CCFI) informed that almost 98% of the pesticides meets stringent quality specifications.

“The association has through RTI’s been able to collect and analyse data from 23 agriculturally important and high consumption states. Over the last 4 years, 251,728 samples were collected for quality testing out of which only 5,890 samples did not meet specification/found substandard,” Harish Mehta, Senior Advisor, CCFI, said.

As per the Insecticides Act 1968, for monitoring of quality of pesticides, 191 Insecticide Inspectors have been notified by the Central Government besides 10,303 Inspectors at State level. Samples are collected by these Insecticides Inspectors and tested in 70 State Pesticide Testing Laboratories and 2 Regional Pesticide Testing Laboratories.

It is worth noting that the agricultural Inspectors draw samples of large, medium & small companies of leading as well minor brands. It is also being observed that in several cases, on retesting the percentage of samples meeting specifications improves further.

In September 2020, Union Agriculture Minister informed Lok Sabha that 338,182 samples were analyzed, 3971 prosecutions have been launched against firms and dealers whose samples were found sub-standard during the last 5 years. This means that only 1.174% as samples found sub-standard.

The state government of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir, Chandigarh reported no case of sale of spurious pesticides during 2014 - 2020.

For the benefit of readers, the word ‘spurious’ does not figure in the Insecticides Act 1968. The only term used is “misbranded” in Sec 3(A).

 Comprehensive Registration of Pesticides (CROP)

Under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine & Storage have developed an advance IT solution Technical Platform ‘Comprehensive Registration of Pesticides’ (CROP) with the objective to improve the service delivery with real time, user friendly IT Solution without any manual intervention.

The purpose is to integrate with all the stakeholders in the system for efficiency and develop Dashboard at various levels of hierarchies, so as to generate MIS reports based on the day to day requirement of the Ministry, Department, CIB&RC, and other stakeholders of the system. This would ensure that only legitimate registered companies/ registered users operate in the country.

Though the dashboard shows 9113 Registered Users as on 16th March 2023, the figures would drop drastically after the registrants/ applicants supposedly complete their KYC on CROP portal by 31st January 2023, failing which the user accounts of those non KYC companies/ users shall be frozen.

This is a continuous process to delist illegal operators and to ensure quality parameters of legitimate manufacturers. As per the information received from 21 State Government and 2 UTs, there are 2403 pesticides manufacturing units in the country. (Source: Lok Sabha unstarred question no. 309 answered on 15th September, 2020).

“We should take pride in the quality of pesticides manufactured indigenously which are exported to over 130 countries meeting stringent quality specifications. These figures reinforce the factual position, demolishing false propaganda and misinformation spread by foreign funded NGOs with vested interests and importing lobby to malign the indigenous manufactures who are committed towards “Atmanirbhar Bharat” through Make in India,” Mehta opined.