Cuttack: The battle over rasagolla landed in the Orissa High Court with filing of two public interest litigations (PILs) seeking judicial intervention to resolve the dispute.
In a much delayed move and following alleged inaction of the state government, writer Sushant on behalf of ‘Punya Utkal’, a Bhubaneswar-based cultural organisation, and Santosh Kumar Sahu, editor-cum-publisher of ‘Oriya Parva’ have filed the petitions. The petitioners appealed to the court to quash conferring of the geographical indication (GI) tag to Bangalar Rasagolla and direct the state government to take measures to claim origin of the sweetmeat.
The petitioners made the Chief Secretary, Shree Jagannath Temple Administration, assistant registrar of Intellectual Property of India office, Chennai and administrative officer of West Bengal state council of science and technology parties to the petitions.
The petitioners stated that there is mention of rasagolla in the rituals of Sri Jagannath temple and in the 500-year old Dandi Ramayana composed by Balaram Das. However, the West Bengal government claimed the credit by furnishing forged data before the Centre.
The petitioners had written to the state as well as Centre in this regard. However, both the governments did not act prompting the petitioners to knock the HC’s door.
PNN
