The Indian and Pakistani commerce ministers might come out on Wednesday with a positive statement on the long-pending joint Geographical Indications(GI) on Basmati but a notice from Islamabad to New Delhi on registering Super Basmati has already spiked the mood against such a move.
The notice sent to the Indian government, confirmed by sources in the commerce ministry, comes in the wake of India registering Super Basmati variety in 2006 for export.
Pakistan believes India's registration of the variety could hit its international market. Pakistan exports close to 800,000 tonnes of the variety annually.
But Indian groups contend that the registration of Super Basmati came as a retaliatory move when Pakistan in negotiations with EU registered the right in 2004 to export Pusa Basmati — a variety known to be widespread in India.
The Indian government's reciprocal action came within two weeks of the Pakistani move. Sources said that the Indian right over Super was bound to stand any legal challenge that Pakistan might put up in pursuance of the notice.
"We registered Super as a Indian variety only after research done by Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) confirmed that the Super variety was the same as a Indian variety traded traditionally in the country as Shabnam or Sikandar generic names. This study had been confirmed in 2003," sources told TOI.
They emphasised that despite the PAU study being available with India, the government did not move on the issue till Pakistan went ahead and registered the Pusa variety as theirs. Officially though, sources said, the issue came up for discussion during the commerce secretary level talks on Tuesday and the two countries seemed to have agreed to work together. A joint statement is expected on Wednesday sources said.
Sources in the commerce ministry raise doubt about how India would progress on the GI issue in the wake of the legal notice even though Pakistan is keen to move on both fronts — attack the Super Basmati registration and look at the possibility of a joint GI.
"It's a rather contradictory move on Pakistan's part. It will be difficult to move on the GI issue without resolving the legal conundrum on Super Basmati," sources in commerce ministry told.
The joint GI has been lying on the backburner for long with trading lobbies in India and Pakistan at loggerheads over basmati trade issues, as TOI had reported earlier. Within India, the agriculture and commerce ministries too have too been playing different tunes on the basmati issue.
Sources say that the key trouble with defining a GI for Basmati is the way Basmati is defined. Tweaking the Basmati definition one way or the other could end up with gains or losses not only for traders but also farmers across the country growing different traditional or evolved varieties of the aromatic rice.
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