A formal objection has been lodged against the Centre’s draft notification proposing amendments to the Insecticides Rules, 1971, with the public interest campaigner Dr. Narasimha Reddy Donthi terming the changes an “unconstitutional restructuring” of India’s pesticide regulatory architecture. The draft rules, published as G.S.R. 190(E) on March 18, 2026, propose a single licence covering “every insecticide” and multiple sale locations, along with an endorsement mechanism for adding products and a nomination facility for licence holders.
In his objection letter to the Joint Secretary (Plant Protection), Dr. Donthi stated, “I write to formally object to the Draft Insecticides (Amendment) Rules, 2026, published vide Notification G.S.R. 190(E) dated 18 March 2026. The proposed amendments to sub-rules 2, 3, 4, and 4A of the Insecticides Rules, 1971, while presented as procedural simplifications, in fact affect a fundamental and unconstitutional restructuring of India’s pesticide regulatory architecture.” He raised five precise objections, beginning with the most fundamental: the amendments raise a serious constitutional question about whether such sweeping changes—collapsing product-specific licensing into a blanket licence and enabling multi-location operation under a single licence—can be effected through subordinate legislation rather than parliamentary amendment of the parent Act.
Second, Dr. Donthi argued that the amendments directly curtail State powers, noting that States like Kerala and Punjab have used their licensing authority to ban or restrict highly toxic insecticides such as endosulfan, monocrotophos, and chlorpyrifos based on documented health evidence. A centralised single licence covering all insecticides would nullify these evidence-based state restrictions at the point of sale, stripping States of authority guaranteed under Articles 21 and 162 of the Constitution. Third, he contended that the amendments substantially weaken regulatory oversight across the entire distribution chain by replacing individual retail licences with corporate multi-location single licences, thereby removing the primary enforcement lever available to district agricultural officers and creating structural conditions for the spread of counterfeit and spurious insecticides—a risk of particular concern for Vidarbha’s farming communities, already scarred by the 2017 Yavatmal pesticide poisoning deaths.
Fourth, the proposed fee structure, capped at ₹7,500 regardless of the number of toxic products or locations covered, was described as wholly disproportionate to the public health and environmental externalities of insecticide commerce. Dr. Donthi pointed out that the Kerala endosulfan tragedy alone resulted in over 500 documented deaths and state rehabilitation expenditure exceeding ₹5,000 crore, yet a licence fee of ₹7,500 does not internalise even a fraction of these potential costs. Fifth, and fundamentally, he argued that the amendments ignore and further erode the integrity of the registration–licensing nexus. Registration under the Act is the scientific, product-specific gate laden with conditions, while licensing is the market-level gate meant to operationalise those conditions at the point of sale. The proposed single licence for “every insecticide” severs this connection entirely, allowing a dealer to stock and sell any registered insecticide without any product-specific assessment of their capacity to comply with that product’s registration conditions.
The detailed written submissions accompanying the objection note that licensing has already been reduced in practice to a file clearance exercise, and that the proposed amendments complete this degradation. The submissions also raise concerns about inadequate consultation, a 30-day window opened during the agricultural sowing season, and the procedural impropriety of amending rules through delegated legislation while a comprehensive Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, is concurrently under parliamentary consideration. Dr. Donthi has urged complete withdrawal of the notification, public hearings in affected States, and any reform to be pursued through parliamentary legislation with proper multi-stakeholder consultation.
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