Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board (MSBB) is planning to rope in NGOs to sensitise ayurvedic manufacturers on the need to comply with Biological Diversity Act, 2002. Sensitisation programme is planned to be carried out at Taluka level in all the 36 districts of Maharashtra through workshops aimed at sustainable use of bio-resources.

This comes in the wake of ayurvedic manufacturers expressing discontentment and utter lack of clarity over serving of notices under Section 7 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. The said section under the act stipulates intimating MSBB in a prescribed format details of the plant based raw material along with details of source attached with a fee of Rs.5000. Till date, 1500 notices have been served and only 10 manufacturers have complied and responded to the notices.

A manufacturer referring to the notice argues that the manufacturer should not be held accountable or liable for the raw material when it has sourced from the supplier or the trader. Details of the source of raw material lies with the supplier exclusively. Besides this, license fee costs only Rs.600 for three years and product fee Rs.100. A registration fee of Rs.5000 defies all logic.

On which N D Choudhari from MSBB clarifies,"Compliance to the Act is actually meant to benefit the manufacturer as it will encourage judicious use of the respective bio-resource in the long term from agriculture and forest areas. This is more relevant today as certain plant based raw materials remain unavailable because of the indiscriminate exploitative practices for commercial interests which has happened in the past in the absence of regulations."

As per the act, manufacturer also has the responsibility to share the details of the source from where the raw material has been procured and also share 2% to 5% of the revenue generated out of the production to further the cause of biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use.

According to Section 7 and 24 (2) of the act, organisations extracting plant based material for commercial purpose without intimation to Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board (MSBB) are liable under Section 55 (2) of the act and shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend up to 3 years with fine or 5 years with fine or both. The notice served states that it is required to share benefit among concerned Biodiversity Management Committees of the state under direction from MSBB.

The notice states that the application in Form - I under Rule 17 of Maharashtra Biological Diversity Rules, 2008 is available on website www.maharashtrabiodiversityboard.gov.in which can be downloaded. You are requested to apply in aforesaid Form -I and send it to the MSBB accompanied with a fee of Rs.5,000 in the form of a demand draft drawn in favour of "The Member Secretary Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board (MSBB)", payable at Nagpur.

It is also required to furnish information like name and address of the company, name of panchayat or Nagar Palika from where raw material has been acquired, name and quantity of biological resources used annually, area and annual production (year wise) and annual gross turn over (gross revenue).

Under Section 56 of the act, it is stated that if any person contravenes any direction given or order made by the Central Government, the State Government, the National Biodiversity Act or the State Biodiversity Board for which no punishment has been separately provided under this act, he shall be punished with a fine which may extend to one lakh rupees and in case of a second or subsequent offence, with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees and in case of continuous contravention with additional fine which may extend to two lakh rupees everyday during which the default continues.

The Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani (ASU) industry had also expressed discontentment in the past over the creation of separate biodiversity board in each state under the Biodiversity Act, stating that it is leading to a lot of confusion among the ASU manufacturers, further complicating the process of acquiring plant raw materials from the forest.