By S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors · Published 28 October 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice: see our disclaimer
An inspection visit, a routine audit, or a complaint from a customer often ends the same way for a food business: a notice arrives naming specific deficiencies and demanding that they be fixed. Many operators treat it as paperwork to be filed away, or alternatively panic and assume their licence is already at risk. Both reactions miss what an improvement notice under Section 32 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 is actually designed to do, which is give a business a defined chance to correct a problem before anything more serious happens to its licence.
The notice itself, how it must be worded, how much time it must allow, and what happens if the deadline passes unmet, follows a specific sequence under the Act. Getting that sequence wrong, either by ignoring the notice or by responding too casually, is how a correctable compliance gap turns into a suspended or cancelled licence. This guide walks through what the notice must contain, what a business should do with it, and the appeal route if things go further than they should.
What Must the Notice Itself Actually Say?
Section 32 lets a Designated Officer issue an improvement notice where there are reasonable grounds to believe a food business operator has failed to comply with the regulations applicable to its licence or registration. The notice is not meant to be a vague warning. It has to state the officer's grounds for believing there has been a failure, identify specifically what has gone wrong, and set out the measures the operator needs to take to put things right, within a period the notice itself specifies.
A business that receives a notice reading only as a general complaint about hygiene, without naming the specific lapse or the exact corrective step expected, has grounds to push back on the notice's validity rather than simply scrambling to comply with something unclear. In practice, Designated Officers increasingly issue these notices through the FoSCoS portal, which also becomes the channel for submitting evidence of compliance, inspection photographs, corrected documentation, or records of a completed repair, so a business should treat its portal response as the primary record of what it did and when, since that is what gets looked at if the matter is disputed later.
How Much Time Do You Actually Get to Comply?
The period for compliance is the one fixed in the notice itself, subject to a statutory floor: Section 32(1) bars the Designated Officer from giving less than fourteen days, whatever the defect, though the period should run longer than that floor where the nature of the defect genuinely needs more time. A business facing a structural issue, a broken drainage system or inadequate pest control infrastructure, for instance, needs more time than one asked to simply relabel a product or correct a minor documentation gap, and the notice should reflect that difference. If the time given looks unreasonably short for the scale of work demanded, that is worth raising with the Designated Officer directly rather than letting the deadline lapse unanswered.
Operators sometimes assume that partial compliance, fixing the easier items on a list while leaving a harder one for later, is good enough to avoid further action. It generally is not. The notice is tied to specific measures, and a Designated Officer assessing compliance is checking whether each one was actually completed, not whether the business made a reasonable effort overall. Where full compliance within the stated time genuinely is not achievable, the better course is to write back before the deadline explaining the difficulty and proposing a realistic revised date, rather than waiting for the deadline to pass and then explaining after the fact.
What Happens If the Deadline Passes Without Compliance?
Where a food business operator fails to comply with an improvement notice, the licence may be suspended. Suspension is the first consequence, and it is generally treated as a temporary measure rather than a final one, intended to stop operations until the specific deficiency named in the notice is actually fixed. A business under suspension that completes the required corrective work can usually apply to have the suspension lifted once it demonstrates compliance, though the process for that varies by state and by the nature of the original defect.
Cancellation sits a step further along this chain and does not happen automatically just because a suspension has run its course. The Designated Officer is required to give the licensee an opportunity to show cause before cancelling the licence outright. That show-cause stage is the business's real chance to present its case, whether that means showing the deficiency has since been corrected, disputing the officer's original findings, or explaining circumstances that delayed compliance. Treating this stage as a formality rather than engaging with it substantively is one of the more common mistakes operators make at this point.
What Can You Actually Appeal, and to Whom?
An operator aggrieved by an improvement notice, or by what follows from it, can appeal to the State Commissioner of Food Safety. The window for that appeal runs fifteen days from the date the decision was served, or the period specified in the improvement notice itself if that period is shorter, so an operator who delays even briefly can find the appeal route has already closed. The Commissioner's decision on that appeal is treated as final at that level of the hierarchy.
That is not the end of the road, though. A decision of the Commissioner can still be challenged before the Food Safety Appellate Tribunal or the High Court of the relevant state or union territory, depending on which forum has been constituted and is operating in that jurisdiction. Because the FSAT is not functional in every state, many operators end up approaching the High Court directly under its writ jurisdiction instead, particularly where the Tribunal has not been set up or is not currently hearing matters. Which forum is actually available should be checked at the time the appeal is being prepared, not assumed from how another state handles the same question.
Does Challenging the Notice Itself Make Sense, or Should You Just Comply?
Not every improvement notice deserves a legal challenge, and treating every notice as an opportunity to fight the Designated Officer rarely serves a business well. Where the underlying deficiency is real and fixable, the sensible course is almost always to comply within the given time, document that compliance carefully, and move on. Food Safety Appellate Tribunals and High Courts have been willing to intervene where a licence suspension continued well past the point an operator had actually corrected the problem, which suggests that courts expect operators to fix genuine defects rather than litigate around them.
A challenge makes more sense where the notice itself is defective, vague grounds, no specific corrective measure identified, an unreasonably short compliance window, or where the officer has moved straight to suspension without the notice stage required by the Act. In those situations, raising the procedural defect early, ideally before the compliance deadline rather than after a suspension has already taken effect, gives a business its strongest position. Waiting until a licence has already been suspended to argue that the original notice was flawed is a weaker position to argue from than raising the same point while the clock is still running.
Does It Matter If You Run Several Outlets Under One Brand?
A chain running several outlets, kitchens or warehouses under one brand name usually holds separate licences or registrations for each premises, since FSSAI licensing is tied to the specific location where food is handled rather than to the brand as a whole. An improvement notice issued against one outlet does not automatically affect the licences held by the other locations, even if they share a kitchen design, a supplier list or a management team. Treating a notice against one branch as a company-wide problem, or conversely assuming it has no bearing on how other branches are run, are both mistakes worth avoiding.
Where the deficiency named in the notice is systemic rather than local, say, a supplier whose raw material consistently fails quality checks, or a storage practice replicated across every outlet, a sensible operator fixes it everywhere rather than only at the inspected location. Regulators have, in practice, treated a chain's response at one outlet as informative about how seriously it takes compliance generally, and a notice ignored at one branch tends to invite closer attention the next time any outlet in the group comes up for inspection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can FSSAI suspend my licence without first issuing an improvement notice?
Section 32 contemplates suspension as a consequence of failing to comply with an improvement notice, so the notice stage ordinarily comes first for this kind of enforcement action. Separate powers under other provisions, such as those dealing with unsafe food, can move more quickly, so the basis cited for any suspension should be checked carefully.
What should I do first after receiving an improvement notice?
Read the specific deficiencies and the compliance deadline carefully, start corrective work immediately rather than waiting, and document every step through the FoSCoS portal. If the deadline genuinely looks too short, write to the Designated Officer before it expires rather than after.
Can I appeal an improvement notice even if I haven't been suspended yet?
Yes, an operator aggrieved by the improvement notice itself can appeal to the State Commissioner of Food Safety within fifteen days of being served, or within the period stated in the notice if shorter. Waiting until suspension follows narrows the options available.
Does partially fixing the problems named in the notice protect my licence?
Not reliably. Compliance is assessed against each specific measure named in the notice, so leaving even one item incomplete can still be treated as non-compliance. Where full compliance by the deadline is not realistic, raise that with the Designated Officer in writing before the deadline passes.
Is the Food Safety Appellate Tribunal available in every state?
No. The Tribunal has not been constituted or made operational in every state, which is why many operators challenging a Commissioner's decision end up approaching the High Court under its writ jurisdiction instead. Check what forum is actually functioning locally before filing.
References & Further Reading
The provisions and rulings below were relied on for this guide. The position can change with amendments and later decisions, so check the current text and the latest case law before acting on any of it.
- Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, Section 32 (improvement notices, suspension and cancellation)
- Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, appeal provisions to the State Commissioner of Food Safety and onward to the Food Safety Appellate Tribunal or High Court
- FSSAI official FAQs on Enforcement (fssai.gov.in)