A Board chaired by the health services chief and a small Registration Committee: how an insecticide is cleared

Background

The Insecticides Act of 1968 extends to the whole of India and controls the import, manufacture, sale, transport, distribution and use of insecticides so that people and animals are not put at risk. A substance is an insecticide if it is in the Schedule, and the Central Government can bring in others, fungicides and weedicides included, after consulting the Central Insecticides Board. That Board advises the Centre and the States on technical matters under the Act, and the Director General of Health Services is its ex officio Chairman. Clearing a product is the work of a separate Registration Committee set up by the Central Government, with a Chairman and not more than five persons who are Board members, among them the Drugs Controller, India and the Plant Protection Adviser. The Committee studies the formula and tests the maker's claims about how well the product works and how safe it is, allots a registration number and is to issue the certificate within twelve months, which it can stretch once by up to six months. Anyone aggrieved by a refusal to register, or by a cancellation, can appeal to the Central Government within thirty days, and the Centre can also call for the record in revision for a year. Licences to make or sell an insecticide come from licensing officers appointed by the State Government, while testing rests with a Central Insecticides Laboratory under its own Director. The Supreme Court has held that a commercial competitor cannot use that appeal route to attack a registration granted to a rival firm.