New Delhi, Jan 7 (IANS) The Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare on Wednesday invited suggestions from stakeholders and the general public for its new draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, which aims to ensure the supply of quality pesticides for farmers and decriminalise petty offences, thereby promoting ease of living as well as ease of doing business.
The fresh draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025 prepared in alignment with current requirements. It is intended to replace the present Insecticides Act, 1968 and the Insecticides Rules, 1971, according to an official statement.
The draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, is a farmer-centric legislation with several salient features. The revised Bill incorporates provisions such as transparency and traceability to ensure better services to farmers, thereby promoting ease of living. It includes reform-oriented measures, including the use of technology and digital methods for streamlining processes, along with stricter control over spurious pesticides through higher penalties.
Provisions have also been made for compounding of offences, with enhanced penalties to act as a deterrent, to be defined by State-level authorities.
Further, amendments have been introduced to strengthen administrative control and management of pesticides, striking a balance between ease of life and ease of doing business. This bill also provides for mandatory accreditation of testing laboratories, ensuring that only quality pesticides are available to farmers.
The Government has fixed February 4, 2026, as the last date for the submission of suggestions on the Bill. The government will take all the comments or suggestions into consideration while finalising the draft bill. However, these suggestions have to be received before the February 4 deadline in the fixed format, the statement added.
As part of the pre-legislative consultation process, the draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025 and the prescribed format are available on the Ministry’s website: https://agriwelfare.gov.in.
“Comments and suggestions on the draft bill and its provisions are invited from all stakeholders and the general public. The comments/suggestions may be sent by email to pp1.pesticides[at]gov[dot]in rajbir.yadava[at]gov[dot]in/ jyoti.uttam[at]gov[dot]in in MS Word or PDF format as early as possible but latest by February 4, 2026,” the statement said.
–IANS
sps/dan
