Smell test: Is garlic vegetable or spice? Madhya Pradesh HC breaks deadlock

Is it a spice? Is it a vegetable?
Garlic, the inconspicuous but ubiquitous kitchen staple made its way to the high table of the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court, which was required to rule on the nature of the plant and settle a heated debate wrought by conflicting state government orders.
Accepting requests by a bunch of farmers, the Madhya Pradesh market board in 2015 passed a resolution and elevated the bulb to the vegetable rack.
However, soon after, the agriculture department scrapped that order and relegated the bulb to spice status, pointing to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act of 1972.
The decision would determine which state government markets garlic could be sold at and affect thousands of commission agents across Madhya Pradesh.
A division bench of justices SA Dharmadhikari and D Venkataraman has now upheld the 2017 order, ruling that garlic is perishable and, hence, a vegetable.
However, the court ruled that the plant could be sold in both vegetable and spice markets, freeing the shackles off its trade and benefiting farmers and sellers alike.
The case has plodded through the high court for years now.
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The Potato Onion Garlic Commission Agent Association first moved the Indore bench against the principal secretary’s order in 2016.The single-judge eventually ruled in favour of them in February 2017.
But this ruling met with consternation from businesspeople, who argued that the verdict would benefit commission agents not farmers.
In July 2017, the petitioner Mukesh Somani moved a review petition, which fell before a two judge-bench of the high court, which in January 2024 pushed it back to the spice shelf, ruling that the high court’s earlier ruling would benefit only traders, not farmers.
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Garlic traders and commission agents sought a review of that order in March this year, a case that finally fell before justices Dharmadhikari and Venkataraman.
The bench, in its order on July 23, which was made public on Monday, restored the February 2017 order, allowing the managing director of the Market Board to make changes to market rules, as was originally done in 2015.
“In fact, the market is established in the interest of the agriculturist and sellers so that they may get better price for their produce, therefore, any by-laws which are framed or amended would be deemed to have in the interest of farmers,” said the order.
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“In the present case, it is established from the return of the Krishi Upaj Mandi that agriculturists represented that the garlic be permitted to be sold through agents as (vegetable) and the State Govt has recommended it as a spice,” said the order.
Madhya Pradesh Market Board joint director Chandra Shekhar said the order will allow commission agents to bid for garlic in vegetable markets.
Parmanand Patidar, a garlic farmer from Mandsaur, said, “We now have two options to sell our produce so we don’t have an issue with this arrangement. Garlic is already being sold at an all-time high price.”