New Seed Bill 2025 to be Introduced in Parliament Budget Session: Key Changes and Penalties

The ministry had unveiled the draft of a new legislation—the Seeds Bill, 2025—in November last year, seeking comments from stakeholders. Once enacted into law, it will replace the existing Seeds Act, 1966, which is six decades old. The new Bill proposes mandatory registration of seed varieties and a penalty of Rs 30 lakh and three years’ imprisonment for major offences such as the sale of spurious and non-registered seeds.

The existing law regulates only notified kinds and varieties of seeds and does not provide for the regulation of research hybrid varieties or varieties that are not notified. Also, seed registration is not compulsory under the current law.

Additionally, green manure seeds, commercial crops, plantation crops, and the like are not covered by the present law. Apart from this limited coverage, the penalties under the present law were also very low. This is why the need for a new law was felt.

Earlier governments attempted to amend the existing law. For instance, a Bill was introduced in the Rajya Sabha on December 9, 2004, and referred to a parliamentary committee on December 17, 2004, but it never became a law.

As per the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, the annual requirement of seeds was estimated at 48.20 lakh tonnes in 2024-25, against which the availability was 53.15 lakh tonnes. In terms of money, India’s seeds market is estimated to be about Rs 40,000 crore. Between May 2014 and August 2025, a total of 3,053 crop varieties have been released, of which 85 per cent came from the public sector and 15 per cent from the private sector.