IMPORTANT POINT
There will be no justification for penalizing farmer for failure on part of Seed Inspector or Committee.

V.K. Jain, Presiding Member—The complainants/respondents are farmers growing crops such as sugarcane and banana etc. in their respective fields. The case of the complainants is that respondent-M/s Surana Irrigators, who is agent of the petitioner company, persuaded them to purchase Tissue Culture Banana Plantlets of the petitioner company, representing that they would be earning Rs.240/- per banana plant within a year. According to the complainants, they planted the aforesaid tissue culture banana plantlets in their respective fields as per the guidance and instructions of respondent-M/s Surana Irrigators, incurring substantial expenditure on purchase of fertilizers and pesticides etc., but some plantlets did not grow, whereas some other got damaged. The matter was reported by them to the representative of the respondent-M/s Surana Irrigators but no relief was provided to the complainants, either by the petitioner company or by respondent-M/s Surana Irrigators. The complainants thereupon made complaint to the Agriculture Officer, Panchayant Samiti, Paranda followed by complaint to the District Agriculture Development Officer. The District Seeds Grievance Redressal Committee visited their fields on 31.05.2008 and reported that the plantlets were defective. The complainants then approached the concerned District Forum by way of separate complaints, seeking compensation from the petitioner company and respondent-M/s Surana Irrigators.

2. The complaint was resisted by the opposite parties. They however did not dispute that they had sold the tissue culture banana plantlets to the complainants. It was stated by the petitioner company that it had imported the said plantlets from Israil and was not responsible for the loss if any sustained by the complainants. It was also claimed by the petitioner, that it had not received any notice from the District Seeds Grievance Redressal Committee.

3. The District Forum held that the banana plantlets sold to the complainants were defective and therefore granted compensation to the complainants.

4. Being aggrieved from the order passed by the District Forum, the petitioner company approached the concerned State Commission by way of separate appeals. Vide impugned order dated 12.01.2015, the State Commission dismissed the appeals, thereby upholding the order passed by the District Forum. Being aggrieved, the petitioner company is before us by way of these revision petitions.

5. The impugned orders have been assailed by the learned Senior Counsel for the petitioner company primarily on the ground that the procedure prescribed under the Seeds Act was not followed by the committee, before it reported the plantlets to be defective. It was submitted that neither any notice of the inspection was served upon the petitioner company before carrying out the inspection nor were the plantlets sent to a laboratory for the purpose of testing and analysis. It was also submitted that the members of the committee not being the experts in the field, could not have held the plantlets to be defective. It was also pointed out that not all the members of the committee were present at the time of inspection and some of those who were alleged to be present had not signed the Panchnama.

6. During the course of arguments, one of the issue which came up for consideration was as to whether Tissue Culture Banana Plantlets are included in the expression “Seed” as defined in Section 2 (11) of the Seeds Act, 1966 or not. We therefore requested the Director, Indian Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa, New Delhi to depute a senior scientist to assist us in arriving at a just conclusion in this regard. Dr. D.K. Yadava from Indian Agricultural Research Institute appeared before us on 01.10.2015 and was examined. In his opinion tissue culture banana plantlets are seeds within the meaning of Section 2 (11) of the Seeds Act, 1966 since they are vegetatively propagated material of food crops. He told this Commission that the manual