The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on a plea for setting up a committee to evaluate the alleged harmful effects of soft drinks on human health and to properly label the beverages, detailing their ingredients.

A bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra reserved its order after a detailed hearing on the Public Interest Litigation petition, filed in 2004.

The plea alleged the ingredients of carbonated drinks have "serious deleterious effects on human health" and no action has been taken to test and assess the risk posed by such beverages.

Soft drink major Pepsi, however, opposed the PIL with its counsel senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi arguing that the Food Safety and Standards Act aimed at regulating the standards of beverages was "sufficient" and all the regulations were in place.

The Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), in its petition filed in 2004, had also sought directions to the cola firms to disclose the contents/ ingredients on the label of their bottles and to regulate "misleading" advertisements targeting children.

Earlier on November 23 the apex court had asked the the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to file "records" relating to proceedings of its panels, formed following a judicial order on the PIL filed by the NGO.

The court's direction came after Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO CPIL, alleged that instead of an expert panel, another FSSAI panel on labelling and claims/ advertisement should consider the grievance of additives in carbonated drinks.

The apex court, on February 8, 2011, had asked FSSAI to reconstitute independent scientific panels to look into the harmful effects of chemicals in carbonated beverages.

FSSAI on September 12 had passed an order, after examining various ingredients of carbonated beverages such as artificial sweetener, phosphoric, malic and citric acid, carbon dioxide, colouring agents, benzoic acid and caffeine.

FSSAI's panel said these ingredients, under prescribed limits, would pose no health hazards.

Scientific Panel On Labelling and Claims/Advertisement of FSSAI, in its order, said, "The expert group reviewed the scientific studies and Food Safety Standards(FSS) Regulations, 2011 and confirmed the following:

"All ingredients mentioned above are within the levels as prescribed in the FSS Regulations, 2011 as per the 'Analytical Data on Carbonated Beverages', produced by Food Research and Standardisation Laboratory, Ghaziabad.

"Based on updated scientific reviews, if these ingredients are consumed within the prescribed levels, no health hazard would be caused in humans."

Earlier, counsel appearing for FSSAI, had said the PIL be disposed of as all reliefs claimed by CPIL "stand satisfied."

He had said that the Food Safety and Standards Act which came into effect in 2006 took care of all the issues raised in the petition.

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) also said that its study concluded that no health hazard would be caused if the ingredients are within prescribed limits.