Madras HC seeks report on action against erring milk sellers

Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the director and additional commissioner of food safety department to submit a report about the action taken against the erring milk sellers either on criminal or civil side.

A division bench comprising Justices Vineet Kothari and Anita Sumanth gave the directive and posted to February 26, further hearing of a PIL filed by advocate A.P. Suryaprakasam, which sought a CBI probe into the allegation of milk being sold in Tamil Nadu is adulterated and if found true, prosecute the adulterated milk producing companies.

The bench said a compilation of charts and details about the surveys conducted by the Food Safety department of milk sellers in all districts of the state is filed. “Prime facie, we find that once the court has taken up the PIL and started monitoring the working of the department, the department appears to have undertaken a special drive in month of December, 2018 and the number of surveys completed during the entire period up to November 2018 ranging from 47 samples analysed, have gone up to 790 samples collected and analysed by the department in the month of December 2018. But, however, on further action taken on the lab reports of the 790 samples, 113 were found to be sub-standard as per the compilation report filed today”, the bench added.

The bench said additional government pleader submitted that the definition number 4 which defines “petty food manufacturers” stipulates that the production capacity of food (other than milk products and meat and meat products) does not exceed 100 kg/litters per day and such petty food manufacturers were not required to obtain license under the Act but get only registered themselves for such food business. Thus small/petty food manufacturers appear to have been left out of the supervising control of the department.

“We shall later examine the validity of the said exclusion. However for the present, we direct the respondent department to submit before us, on the basis of information to be collected through all the district revenue officers, about the action taken by them either on criminal side or on civil side with a case wise details and as to the quantum of penalty or fine imposed on the erring sellers of milk in each district and also the criminal cases launched against the accused persons in the competent magistrate courts”, the bench added.

The bench said even criminal trials launched about 6 to 10 months ago have not reached any final stage. “We, prima facie, feel that the cases pertaining to the food safety should have an urgent priority in the competent court dealing with such trials also because they directly affect health and life of the citizen under Article 21 of the Constitution. We assert that the courts concerned as well as the DROs dealing with civil proceedings against such sellers give urgent priority to such cases. We direct the registrar general of this court to obtain reports from the courts concerned of all districts through principal district judges about the said classes of cases of food safety and the number of cases pending in their courts, giving year wise break up of such cases to ensure that the trial of such cases pertaining to food safety receive due and urgent priority at their hands”, the bench added.

The bench said similar charts from DROs concerned, who deal with the civil cases under the said Act, also shall be procured by the director, who was present in the court, by the next date of hearing, besides submit the case wise details in the form of charts.