The textiles committee of the Union Ministry of Textiles has asked the various weaving communities of West Bengal to apply for the Geographical Indication (GI) tag for Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection.At present only three types of sarees from West BengalBaluchari, Santipur and Dhaniakhali have obtained the GI tags.

DeputyDirector of the Textiles Committee of the textiles ministry T.K. Rou says that the different weaving communities of West Bengal has been asked to go for GI registration. Some of them are the weavers of Bengali Jamdani, Begumpuri and Bengali Tangailsarees which have huge export markets.

GI is IPR which provides protection to the products which have origins in a particular geographical location and different from patents and trademarks. He further added that the weavers of scarves and stoles of Fulia must also apply for GI registration.

Rout stated that once these weaving communities get the GI tag, it will give protection to those weaving communities from counterfeit claims by others, alsoIPR would be protected and legal action could be initiated against those who were not bonafide claimants of these textile products.

Currently 270 products of the country had been registered under the GI Act, out of which 151 of those belong to the textiles and handicrafts segment.