By India Tomorrow Staff Reporter,
New Delhi, 04 March 2014: Several environmental activists on Tuesday protested against Union Minister of Environment and Forest Veerappa Moily at the ministry building in New Delhi for permitting various multinational seed companies for field trial of genetically modified (GM) crops throughout the country. They were holding a banner which reads “Moily Selling the Nation”. They have also urged other political leaders to come forward to ‘save food’.
Addressing the gathering Neha Saigal, senior campaigner of Greenpeace India, criticized Moily and said that through this our seed and food supply will be contaminated.
“The environment minister has gone ahead and approved around 200 GM Field Trials including GM varieties of rice, maize and other food crops which have a huge potential to contaminate our seed and food supply.”
“We want all the political parties to come forward and demand the reversal of this irresponsible decision,” She demanded.
On Feb 27, Moily has approved confined field trials of GM crops.
“The approval by the GEAC (genetic engineering approval committee) was within the bounds of law so we have approved it,” news agency PTI quoted Moily.
The decision will allow genetic modification of more than 200 varieties of rice, maize, wheat, castor and cotton etc.
Saigal also alleged that the minister’s decision has come at the time when nation is going for general election and it clearly shows the corporate interests over the people of the country.
Rajesh Krishnan, convener of Coalition for a GM Free India, said that the government has proved that they don’t care about society as far as the issue of GM corps is concerned.
“It’s now amply clear that Veerappa Moily was brought in during the last innings of the UPA 2 to give express approvals for these risky experiments of GM crops and with this one act the govt has once again proved that they do not care about science or society when it comes to GM crops,” Kirshnan argued.
The coalition had recently released a compilation of more than 400 scientific papers on the adverse impacts of GM crops.
“This is a last ditch effort by the central govt to bring GM crops into our food and farms through the backdoor after having failed to pass the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill to ease their approval process,” Krishnan added.
Central government has tried unsuccessfully to pass the BRAI Bill, 2013 in the 15th Lok Sabha.
It is alleged that through this bill, the government wanted to create a single system for approval of environmental releases of GM crops.
According to Greenpeace, political parties like Aam Aadmi Party, Janta Dal (United), Pattali Makkal Katchi and various farmer leaders have condemned the government’s decision to permit field trial.
