Business Standard: New Delhi: Wednesday, October 29, 2014.
The Swadeshi
Jagaran Manch (SJM), a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-affiliated
organisation, said it was “pained” by the Centre’s flip-flop on field trials of
two varieties of genetically-modified (GM) crops in a few states.
“If the
government has given approval for field trials of GM brinjal and mustard,
despite giving an assurance to us, we are really pained at this,” said Ashwani
Mahajan, all-India co-convener of SJM. Mahajan said his organisation was
studying whether the trials, which had been given a nod by the Centre were
those approved by previous Union Environment Minister Veerappa Moily or the
present incumbent, Prakash Javadekar.
However, a
reply given by the Union environment ministry under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act to Manvendra Singh Inaniya, a Greenpeace campaigner, on September 18
stated the government passed an order dated August 21, based on the approval
given by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) in its meeting held
on August 18. This is when the NDA government was in power. The GEAC had
approved field trials of 13 GM crops, including those of mustard, cotton,
brinjal, rice and chickpea. GEAC is a statutory body for recommending approval
to any release of genetically-engineered products into the environment.
“If the
government is intending to give approval to field trials of GM crops, they
should have done it openly and not conveyed it merely through an RTI reply…We
stand by our words that we look at this move in anguish and disbelief,” said
Mahajan.
Greenpeace
India said many state governments, including those ruled by the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have denied permission
for field trials.
“It now seems
that the Union government is not bothered about the opposition of various state
governments regarding GM field trials, including the recent opposition by the
Gujarat government, which confirmed that it will not issue a no-objection
certificate (a statutory requirement from the state government for conducting
open air trials) for any field trial of GM food crop,” said Inaniya, who filed
the RTI. Business Standard independently reviewed some of the letters from the
states refusing to give no-objection certificates for such trials.
The ministry
order stated that Delhi University’s Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop
Plants has been given permission to conduct field trials for a new variety of
GM mustard and Maharashtra-based Bejo Sheetal Seeds Private Limited to test Bt
brinjal.
The DU can
conduct trials in 10 locations of Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR),
Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and Bejo
Sheetal can do so in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, New
Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.
However, this
would require a no-objection certificate (NOC) from the state governments to
conduct open air trials. Except for Maharashtra, all these states have shown
reluctance against GM crop trials.
The GEAC
decision was strongly opposed by the Sangh Parivar organisations such as SJM
and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS). Under pressure from these groups, Javadekar
had reportedly put on hold field trials on July 29.
“The minister
assured the members of SJM and BKS that the decision (on field trials) had been
put on hold,” Mahajan had said in a press statement on July 30.
Javadekar has
been ambivalent on his stance on field trials of GM crops. In a public event on
August 6, he had said the country cannot ignore science but will also have to
tread cautiously.
“We are not
saying no to science. We have to take proper caution and proper action,”
Javadekar had said. He had also pointed that the Supreme Court was still hearing
a case on the matter though remaining ambiguous if the government would defer
its decision till it got a final verdict in the matter.
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