GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATION OF ‘DARJEELING TEA’-CHALLENGED

Darjeeling Tea, one of the worlds famous and a premium Geographical Indications from India  was registered as first Indian GI with office of The Registrar of GI, Chennai. This was pursuant to the enforcement of GI Act 1999.

 

It has been registered on the application filed by a statutory Body known as ‘Tea Board’ under ‘The Tea Act’, having its head office at Kolkotta. The ‘Tea Board’ is constituted with an objective to promote and protect export of ‘Darjeeling Tea’.

 

As earlier stated, the manner procedure and practice adopted by the office of The Registrar GI in India is highly illegal and arbitrary and is an example of sheer non- application of mind to the issues involved.

 

Section 11 of the GI Act postulates for an application to be filed by an authority established under law for protecting interest of growers/ producers.

 

The legal status The ‘Tea Board’ who filed an application for Darjeeling Tea, was not at all examined by the Registrar office at Chennai. Whether the ‘Tea Board’ is eligible under Section 11 of GI Act was never scrutinized. Not a single authorised user has been registered till yet. In consequence all the existing bonafide growers are made unauthorized users, as the GI Laws gives protection to only registered authorised users. 

 

Recently one Shri Rajeev Saraf from New Delhi, a highly Public spirited person, has taken up this cause of registration of GI’s in illegal manner by the office of the Registrar, Chennai and has moved a petition for cancellation of registered GI of ‘Darjeeling Tea’.

 

The objective of GI Laws in India is to protect the interests of its producers. All the growers of Darjeeling Tea are not the members of ‘Tea Board’ and nor the same has been constituted with an objective to protect the interests of Tea growers. It also lacks  mandate to apply and obtain protection under various Intellectual Property Rights/Laws for the growers.

 

There is no second thought that Darjeeling Tea is our nations pride and must be protected by eliminating its spurious market. But it would be highly undesirable to protect the same in manner as done now. Such kind of registration is bound to collapse sooner or later.

 

What we need is to do introspection as to whether the action undertaken by various Government agencies and other statutory authorities to themselves protect IP Rights is a correct act or not. Till yet such efforts have not yielded any positive results expect seminars after seminars and only projecting the higher number of registered GI’s in India. Further perpetuation of illegal acts shall render the wonderful concept of GI a nullity. What we need to reevaluate all our decisions and rectify errors.

 

The correct approach to protect GI should be to actively involve grass root Principal Stakeholders in the acts of protection of GI, constitute their legally sustainable body with no commercial objective and thereafter proceed under law for protection.