Pesticides PIL WP(Civil) 1079 of 2017

A Public Interest Litigation was filed by some members associated with ASHA in the Supreme Court of India, in 2017, with the following prayers (this case has been tagged with, and being heard along with another WP (civil) 237 of 2017):

a) Issue a writ of Mandamus, or direction, or any other similar order or direction to ban all the pesticides that have been banned by other countries.

b) Issue a writ of Mandamus, or direction, or any other similar order or direction to ban the advertising and unacceptable practices of marketing and promoting pesticides.

c) Issue a writ of Mandamus, or direction, or any other similar order or direction to make it mandatory to follow the precautionary principle before registering any pesticide for use or manufacture.

d) Issue a writ of Mandamus, or direction, or any other similar order or direction to make it mandatory to perform a needs and alternatives assessment before registering any pesticide.

e) Issue a writ of Mandamus, or direction, or any other similar order or direction to appoint an expert committee comprising of individuals of unimpeachable integrity mainly from the field of Organic Agriculture / agro-ecology to examine the issue of making a roadmap for phasing out all chemical pesticides in a time bound manner, preferably within 5 years, and for making recommendations on the assistance to be given by the Central and State Governments to farmers for the period of time it will take for their farms to convert to chemical pesticide free organic farms, as well as for providing the requisite impetus to organic farming in the country, and also, to issue consequent directions to the Central and the State Governments to implement the recommendations of the said expert committee.

(Note: Not all the documents being shared below are in the form of final versions of what was filed in the court proceedings)
A copy of the (penultimate draft of the) petition can be downloaded here.

Petitioners’ submission to Dr JS Sandhu Committee, as per Hon’ble SC Orders in March 2018 can be found here.

IA No.132760 in September 2018 is available here.

UoI’s counter affidavit dated 14th September 2018 is downloadable here with Vol. II Annexures here.

Rejoinder Affidavit of petitioners in November 2018 to UoI’s counter affidavit is available here. Annexure to this Rejoinder Affidavit with a list of 110 bannable pesticides is downloadable here.

An Amendment Application was filed by petitioners in February 2019, with additional prayers and this is available here.

IA No.7655 of 2023 filed by petitioners on 11th January 2023 is available here.

Status Report, as per the Hon’ble SC’s orders, filed by Union of India on 3rd February 2023 is available here.

Reply from petitioners, dated 23rd February 2023 to the Additional Affidavit of the UoI in the form of Status Report is downloadable here.

Short Additional Affidavit from petitioners on 24th March 2023, (given that the Government of India put out a draft ban order only on 3 pesticides out of 27 pesticides) is accessible here.

Government of India’s Additional Affidavit dated 27th April 2023 is available here.

Rejoinder filed by Kavitha Kuruganti dated 23rd July 2023 is downloadable here.