The Delhi High Court has ordered a specialized committee to submit a detailed report comprising of guidelines to inhibit the widespread usage of forbidden pesticides in vegetables and fruits. The deadline for the board of committee has been fixed as August 17, 2012. The Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul along Justice Rajiv Shakdher pursued the report from the board of committee. This is an attempt to engineer a policy for intermittent checks to identify pesticides deposits in vegetables posing potential health threat to citizens.
The High Court has also directed the government to establish the committee once it took suo-motu awareness of a recent media report claiming usage of banned pesticides. The judges certified the request of pesticides manufacturers. The court allowed them to forward their views during the creation of guidelines by the committee.
Secretary of the central insecticide board and registration committee, Sandhya Kulshrestha was added to the expert committee comprising of six members by the court. Agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan recommended the addition of this seventh member. As per the NGO Consumer Voice's report, it has been discovered about thirty five varieties of vegetables and fruits tested for pesticide content, contained toxins beyond tolerable parameters. These fruits and vegetable were picked up from Delhi markets. The Ngo reported to the High Court about toxic vegetables and fruits sold in the city's marketplaces. They claimed that the eatables contained harmful poisons capable of causing cancers. These might and cause serious damage to the nervous system and liver. According to the NGO, the amount of pesticides utilized by Indian farmers was 750 times higher as compared to the European standards. The court previously designed a panel of attorneys to scrutinize the pesticide content in several vegetables examples at research laboratories. Shockingly, the panel has studied more than ten categories of vegetables.