It's a proud moment for the state of Odisha and its people as it has finally won the sweet battle against West Bengal. Odisha has received Geographical Indications (GI) tag for its rasgulla. The much-awaited GI recognition comes a year after West Bengal walked away with the tag. A GI tag recognizes a product as distinctive to a particular locality or region or country. The sweet has been registered under GI of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 2019 as ‘Odisha Rasagola’.
Signaling the end of the long battle with West Bengal over the origin of the famous Indian sweet, Odisha has won big. With this victory, #OdishaRasagola is trending on Twitter with members of the social media reacting to Odisha's win against West Bengal.
Odisha moved the GI Registry for its own version of rasagola after West Bengal was awarded the GI tag for its own 'Banglara Rasgulla' on November 14, 2017.
Odisha had submitted various documents sought by the GI Registry office including the chemical composition, moisture and nutrient contents of the sweet along with the general practices adopted during the production process as well as its quality and hygiene standards at various stages of production.
West Bengal and Odisha have been engaged in a bitter legal battle over the origin of the Rasgulla since June 2015.
The battle took a turn for the worse when Odisha’s former Science and Technology Minister Pradip Kumar Panigrahi set up several committees in 2015 to trace the origin of the sweet delicacy. They even went a step further to declare July 30 as ‘Rasagolla Dibasa’, to celebrate its origin.
Then Bengal government, too, set up a committee and decided to fight the Odisha government's claims legally, and, while referring to 19th century origin of Rasagulla argued that the quintessential Bengali delicacy was created by Nabin Chandra Das, a famous sweetmeat-maker in 1868.
