HC notice to Centre on plea for quarantine station at Madurai

Citing problems in obtaining plant quarantine (PQ) certificate for export of perishable farm products from the city, an exporter has moved the Madurai bench of Madras High Court for a direction to the Centre to set up a full-fledged PQ station at the airport here.

When the PIL filed by the exporter came up for hearing today, Justices C T Selvam and Basheer Ahamed ordered issuing notices to the officials concerned including Plant Protection Advisor, Haryana (under the Union ministry of Agriculture), Regional Director of Plant Quarantine Station, Chennai and Director of Airports Authority of India, Madurai, and posted the case for hearing on June 13.

The petitioner, S A Sayeed, Director (Operations), ABS Xpress Private Ltd, also sought an interim direction to attach the PQ station in Madurai with the one at Tiruchirappalli for the time being.

The Madurai station was without a PQS official and was attached to Chennai which was too far from Tiruchirapalli, he submitted.

The petitioner submitted there was utmost urgency to post a PQ signatory officer at Madurai airport so that 50 MT of perishable agricultural products could be exported every month and that would bring nearly Rs 20 crore as revenue to Government of India.

The air cargo terminal at Madurai International Airport here began functioning from December 2017 and there are more than three international carriers operating out of this airport, the petitioner submitted.

At present more than 100 metric tonnes of cargo is handled at the airport and 90 per cent of it comprises perishable agricultural products, the petitioner said.

As the Madurai PQ office is attached to Regional PQ station in Chennai, every time an exporter has to travel to the Tamil Nadu capital, get the certificate and return to Madurai, approximately covering a distance of 900 km to produce the certificate within 24 hours which is difficult, he submitted.

This, the petitioner submitted led to 90 per cent of the articles getting perished as it included items like jasmine flowers (for which Madurai is famous), rose etc.

He submitted that despite several requests for a full-fledged PQ station with signatory official, the request had not been fulfilled so far.