Rasagola battle reaches Orissa High Court

Bhubaneswar: The battle over Rasagola between Odisha and West Bengal has reached the Orissa High Court.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Orissa High Court seeking Geographical Indication (GI) tag for “Odishara Rasagola.”

The PIL was filed by Sushanta Sahu, Secretary of Punya Utkal Trust and Santosh Kumar Sahoo, Editor of Odisha Parba.

The PIL has named Shri Jagannath Temple Administration, Government of Odisha, West Bengal State Council of Science and Technology and Chennai Intellectual Property Office as parties.

The plea comes after West Bengal was given the GI tag for “Banglar Rasogulla” in November last year.

While seeking GI tag for “Odishara Rasogola,” the PIL also sought to scrap of the GI tag of West Bengal.

Earlier, the Odisha Government had decided to apply for GI tag for ‘Odishara Rasagola’ within a week after West Bengal was granted GI status for ‘Banglar Rasogolla’. However, the Government failed to file an application at the GI office in Chennai.

Later, the state government decided to apply for GI tag to ‘Jagannath Rasagola’ instead of ‘Odishara Rasagola’ following a recommendation from the MSME Department on the basis of a comprehensive report prepared after taking the views of legal experts and various stakeholders on the issue.