The Andhra Pradesh High Court has stayed a Telangana Government order that has reduced the royalty fee (or trait value) on Bollgard-II (BG-II) seeds. Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (India), which owns the BG-II technology and sub-licences the same to seed manufacturers, moved the court, asking it to quash the order.
“The GO 238 issued on May 11 is illegal and arbitrary. We appeal to the court to quash the said GO that tries to fixes or regulate the trait value charged by us from its sub-licensees,” the firm said in the petition.
“The court has granted an interim stay on that part of the government order which had sought to fix or regulate the trait value,” the firm said in a statement on Thursday.
The order reduced the royalty fee to Rs 50 from Rs 90 and increased the procurement component to Rs 330 from Rs 290. (Firms procure the seed from the seed producers before marketing them in sealed packets.) It put the MSP at Rs 930 on a 450-gm packet.
The Andhra Pradesh Government, which also issued an order recently fixing the price at Rs 930, has not altered the royalty fee.
“The Government had wrongly enforced a reduction in trait fees by overriding mutually agreed private contracts between MMB and the seed companies. Trait fees in India are the lowest for these technologies across cotton growing countries,” the firm said in a statement on Thursday.