In a writ petition preferred as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution, seeking directions for the constitution of a National Task Force/Committee to monitor and ensure effective compliance with food safety enforcement measures across the country, among various other prayers, a bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta dismissed the petition for being devoid of merit.
The petitioner raised the issue of unsafe and unhygienic food being provided to the citizens of the country and pointed out the discovery of foreign objects and hazardous substances in commercially manufactured food, along with contamination incidents, mass food poisoning incidents, seizure of large quantities of adulterated food, operation of the informal food sector, and regulatory failures in packaged food safety.
Apart from seeking the constitution of a National Task Force, the petitioner sought the strengthening of the enforcement infrastructure, periodic reporting to the Court, public disclosure of violations, front-of-pack warning regulations, strengthened safety protocols for institutional food systems, and a nationwide grievance and compensation mechanism.
The Court found that the present petition was based upon certain newspaper reports that referred to sporadic incidents, which, by themselves, could not constitute reliable or legally admissible evidence to form the basis of a PIL. It was stated that the petition lacked supporting material to demonstrate a pervasive failure of food safety mechanisms across the country; as a result, the generic assertions amounted to minuscule individual events that could not be treated as concrete violations of fundamental rights.
The Court stated that although newspaper reports can trigger judicial scrutiny in certain circumstances, they cannot be elevated to the status of substantive evidence unless corroborated by independent and reliable data.
Further, the Court noted that statutory frameworks, such as the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, were already in place to address the issues highlighted in the present petition. It was said that the Act established the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) as a specialized body entrusted with regulating and supervising food safety standards across the country. It was stated that where the legislature had created a specialized authority equipped with the required technical expertise and scientific resources to regulate a particular sector, the Court must exercise judicial restraint and abstain from becoming a super-regulator in the absence of systematic failure of the existing machinery.
The Court held that a few stray instances of non-compliance do not constitute sufficient grounds for the issuance of a writ of mandamus and thus dismissed the petition as devoid of merit.
Appearances:
For Petitioner – Party-in-person
For Respondent – None
