After Odisha won the Geographical Indication (GI) tag in a battleground with West-Bengal over a sweet delicacy “Rosogolla”, now it’s West Bengal claiming for their lost identity. Its passed one month that a bitter-sweet battle is taking place over a sweet delicacy and this time it’s West-Bengal getting to keep the GI status.
In the year 2017 West Bengal was given the GI tag for ‘Banglar Rosogolla’ and in February 2018, Odisha filed a rectification petition under Mr. Ramesh Chandra Sahoo, Chairman of regional development trust in Odisha, demanding the cancellation of Bengal’s GI as they believe it belongs to them since it has history and evidence attached to the sweet.
The registration was dismissed by the registry on October 31 since Odisha delayed in providing evidence on a given timeline.
“Instead of countering the evidence on merit West Bengal challenged the evidence on technical grounds. An interlocutory petition was also filed by West Bengal seeking dismissal of the application for rectification under the mandatory provisions of law,” says Manosij Mukherjee, advocate.
He also said that when Odisha filed a registration claiming the GI, West Bengal also filed a counter registration at the same time. “They ended up filing the evidence in the end but that was after the stipulated period of three months.”
As of now, both the states have GI status for their own versions of the dessert. The origin still remains uncertain.
