Is garlic a vegetable or a spice?
Indian cuisine is nothing short of a wonder. Here are the things that can keep diseases away from your body by eating them. Now these items with medicinal properties can be vegetables and spices too. But how do you know if something is a vegetable or a spice? This question is not as absurd as it sounds. A dispute reached the court over one such item whether it was a vegetable or a spice. We are talking about onions and garlic.
Garlic… is it a herb or a spice. This is a question that even a good man’s mind will ponder. But, the court has now answered this question. The Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court gave its judgment after hearing this nine-year-old petition.
Spices to vegetables, spices to vegetables
In the year 2015, garlic was placed under the category of vegetables considering the request of some farmer organizations. It was a different matter that within a short time the Agriculture Department revoked this order and restored the status of garlic as a spice. The argument given behind this was that garlic is called a spice in the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act, 1972. After this, a review petition was once again filed in the court in the year 2017. This time the matter came directly before a two-judge bench of the High Court. In January 2024, this bench reversed the earlier decision, meaning that garlic is now a spice.
After all, what is garlic?
But now traders are upset about this. When he did not like the decision, he approached the court again. An appeal was filed in March to review the decision of the two-judge bench. After many arguments, the matter was finally resolved. The Indore bench upheld the February 2017 decision. That is, the same decision taken by the Market Board in 2015 will also apply to garlic. To put it bluntly, the High Court in a recent decision declared garlic a vegetable and ruled in a nine-year-old case.
