What a Medicinal Plant Is, and Why the Law Finds It Hard

In one line

No Indian statute defines a medicinal plant, and that single fact is the beginning of every difficulty in this module.

In exam wording: there is no definition of a medicinal plant in the Biological Diversity Act 2002, the Wild Life (Protection) Act 1972, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 or the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act 2001; the same plant may at the same time be a biological resource under section 2(c) of the Act of 2002, a specified plant under section 2(27) of the Act of 1972 if it is listed in Schedule III, minor forest produce under section 2(i) of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, which expressly includes medicinal plants and herbs, forest produce under section 2(4) of the Indian Forest Act 1927 if it is found in or brought from a forest, an ingredient of an Ayurvedic, Siddha or Unani drug within the meaning of section 3(a) of the Act of 1940 if it is used in accordance with the formulae described in the books specified in the First Schedule to that Act, and a variety or an extant variety under section 2 of the Act of 2001 if it is cultivated; and each of those characterisations brings a different authority, a different permission and a different penalty.

Where the law does mention medicinal plants

Section 2(i) of the Forest Rights Act 2006. Minor forest produce includes all non-timber forest produce of plant origin including bamboo, brush wood, stumps, cane, tussar, cocoons, honey, wax, lac, tendu or kendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots, tubers and the like. This is the closest thing in Indian law to a statutory recognition of the category, and it appears in an Act about the rights of forest dwellers, not in an Act about plants.

The proviso to section 7 of the Biological Diversity Act 2002, as substituted with effect from 1 April 2024, excludes cultivated medicinal plants and their products from the requirement of prior intimation to the State Biodiversity Board. Section 7(2) makes that exemption conditional on a certificate of origin from the Biodiversity Management Committee.

Section 40 of the same Act permits the Central Government, in consultation with the National Biodiversity Authority, to declare that all or any provisions shall not apply to biological resources normally traded as commodities, or to items derived from them including agricultural wastes as notified, and to cultivated medicinal plants and their products for entities covered under section 7, registered as prescribed, with a proviso that no exemption shall be made for the activities in sub-sections (1) and (2) of section 6.

Chapter IVA of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940, which deals with Ayurvedic, Siddha and Unani drugs, reaches the plant not as a plant but as an ingredient of a drug.