India’s government issued a draft order on July 13 to ban paraquat dichloride, a herbicide that has killed farmers and farm workers for decades and has no antidote. The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare published the notification after an expert panel spent five months reviewing the chemical’s health record.
The order would end the import, manufacture, sale, transport, distribution and use of paraquat across the country. A 2025 systematic review in BMC Public Health found at least 74 countries, including the United Kingdom and the herbicide’s country of origin, no longer authorize paraquat for sale.
Stakeholders have 30 days from July 13 to file objections before the government finalizes the rule.
Why Regulators Moved Now
The Ministry formed an Expert Committee on January 14 to study whether paraquat should keep its registration in India. The committee delivered its findings on June 12. The Registration Committee, a statutory body under the Insecticides Act of 1968, then reviewed toxicology data and recommended a full ban.
The Registration Committee’s report cited three problems: a long record of poisoning deaths, no specific antidote, and adverse health effects documented across decades of use. The government agreed the chemical poses unacceptable risk to people and animals.
A 2024–2026 study at Karnataka Medical College and Research Institute in Hubballi tracked 122 confirmed paraquat poisoning cases and recorded a death rate of 50.81 percent. Patients who developed acute respiratory distress syndrome died in 93.87 percent of cases, researchers found. A separate study in northeast India recorded a mortality rate of 90.47 percent among 21 patients.
“Once ingested, paraquat rapidly accumulates in the lungs, kidneys and liver, generating reactive oxygen species that trigger irreversible tissue damage,” according to clinical researchers who have studied the chemical’s toxicology in Indian hospitals.
A Chemical With No Antidote
Paraquat kills by damaging organs faster than doctors can intervene. Even a small swallowed dose can cause fatal lung fibrosis within days or weeks. Doctors treat poisoning with activated charcoal, steroids, dialysis and immunosuppressive drugs, but survival remains poor once symptoms turn severe.
Farmers and farm laborers face the highest exposure risk, through accidental swallowing, inhaling spray mist, or skin contact through cuts and wounds during spraying season.
Researchers have also linked long-term paraquat exposure to Parkinson’s disease and reproductive harm, according to a 2024 review in the National Medical Journal of India by Bharadwaj Sai Satya Murthy Malla and Ananth Rupesh Kattamreddy of Andhra Medical College’s forensic medicine department. The authors pointed to Taiwan and South Korea as evidence that bans work: Taiwan saw pesticide suicides fall 37 percent after banning paraquat, and South Korea’s pesticide suicide rate roughly halved within two years of its ban.
Public pressure had been building before the national order. Telangana restricted paraquat sales in March. Andhra Pradesh followed with a 60-day prohibition after its Director General of Police flagged a rise in suicides linked to the chemical.
Boyinapalli Vinod Kumar, a former Lok Sabha member, welcomed the national notification, saying it “vindicated the efforts of doctors, social organisations and the Indian Medical Association,” which had lobbied for years for a countrywide ban. In February, before the ban, he told reporters that paraquat was killing 10 to 20 people a month in Telangana alone.
Warangal MP Kadiyam Kavya raised the issue on the floor of the Lok Sabha in March, telling colleagues that the herbicide is internationally recognized as acutely toxic and that no antidote exists for it.
The human toll extends beyond hospital statistics. Actor Rahul Ramakrishna wrote on social media in March that he had lost his brother to paraquat poisoning, calling the chemical “terrifyingly lethal and widely misused for self-destruction.”
Misuse Beyond Approved Crops
India had approved paraquat for spraying on nine crops: tea, potato, cotton, rubber, coffee, paddy, maize, wheat and grapes. But the ministry found the chemical was routinely used far outside those limits.
In Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, farmers sprayed paraquat on standing moong, or green gram, crops shortly before harvest to dry the plants faster and cut labor costs. That off-label spraying let pesticide residue slip into the food chain, Kisan Tak reported, citing ministry sources who called it one of the central reasons officials pursued a nationwide ban rather than tighter labeling rules.
What Happens Next
If the draft order is finalized after the comment period, every registration certificate issued for paraquat products will be cancelled. Manufacturers and dealers have three months to surrender their certificates to the Registration Committee once the final rule takes effect, or face legal action.
State governments will carry out inspections and enforce the ban locally. Objections to the draft can be sent to the Joint Secretary for Plant Protection at the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare in New Delhi.
India still permits several agrochemicals that other countries have restricted or banned, including glyphosate, 2,4-D, dimethoate and acephate. Regulators have not signaled plans to review those chemicals on the same timeline as paraquat.
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