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Supreme Court Directs Government to Set up Panel to Examine Cola Contents
Indian Express
February 27, 2006
NEW DELHI: Charges of the presence of lethal chemicals continue to
haunt soft drink majors, including Coca Cola and Pepsi. The Supreme
Court today directed the Centre to constitute an expert panel to find
out whether there were any harmful chemical contents in soft drinks.
A bench of Justices Ruma Pal and Dalveer Bhandari, which issued the
direction, ordered that the panel would also, inter alia, go into
the "broader issue" of all lethal contents in soft drinks and not
restrict itself to the charge of pesticide content.
The interim direction came on a PIL by the Centre for Public Interest
Litigation (CPIL) a legal activist organisation. The apex court has
given three week's time to the Centre for setting up the panel. The
PIL contended that the soft drinks contained harmful chemical ingredients
like phosphoric acid.
Counsel for the CPIL Prashant Bhushan suggested the name of Sunita
Narain, Director of Centre for Environment, as a possible member of
the expert committee but the judges rejected it holding that Narain
was a "social activist" and what the committee needed was a "technical
member" to advise on scientific aspects.
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