Chennai: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Sunday asked Centre to clarify its position on the controversy surrounding the presence of pesticides in soft drinks.
"Government of India will have to take a decision. If two three states ban (the sale of the soft drinks) they will just shift their business to other places. So our position is that the Indian government should come out with its decision," said Buddhadeb.
Though the Left-ruled Kerala has put a blanket ban on the Coca Cola and PepsiCo products in the wake of recent reports of pesticide traces in soft drinks, West Bengal Government has adopted a wait and watch policy.
West Bengal Chief Minister said that the State Pollution Control Board was investigating the issue and would soon come out with a detailed report.
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in a report had stated that the presence of pesticides continues to exist in colas much beyond the permissible limit and that samples from Kolkata exhibited a much higher percentage of pesticides presence compared to the national average.
Till date, five state governments have stopped the sale of the drinks manufactured by Coca Cola and PepsiCo at or near schools, colleges and hospitals after CSE said it had found pesticide residues in 57 samples of the two firms' products.
Meanwhile, the companies have refuted the allegations saying that Cola-Cola soft drinks manufactured in India, met European Union purity standards for pesticides in bottled water.
A similar study by the CSE in 2003 had briefly dented sales of the two companies' drinks when it reported levels of pesticide in excess of international standards, highlighting weak food safety laws in the country.
The CSE had said it found pesticide levels of 11.85 parts per billion drinks tested in 12 Indian states, 24 times higher than limits agreed, but not yet enforced, by the Bureau of Indian Standards.
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