Green ministry to reconstitute GM regulator this week

Caught between devil and deep sea, the environment ministry has reconstituted the bio-tech regulator --- the Genetically Engineered Appraisal Committee (GEAC) – before start of the new season for field trails. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 6, 2013, 24:27:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Caught between devil and deep sea, the environment ministry has reconstituted the bio-tech regulator - the Genetically Engineered Appraisal Committee (GEAC) - before start of the new season for field trails.

The ministry had not constituted the GEAC for almost a year thinking that it would be replaced by the Biotech Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI), an independent regulator to be set up by science and technology ministry.

A parliamentary standing committee had submitted its report on BRAI in last August but the science and technology ministry has not got the final version of the bill approved by the Cabinet because of differences within the government. Technically, there is no regulator for GM products now.

“We thought that the reworked BRAI bill would be introduced in the budget session of Parliament,” a senior ministry functionary said, explaining the reason for delay in constituting the committee that gives approvals for field trials of genetically modified crops.

Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had raised tempo for re-constituting GEAC saying the delay was denying the scientists of their right to experiment on GM crops. “We can’t afford to curtail the vigour of our scientific community and deny them the right to conduct field trial (trial of) GM crops... The process of research should not be stopped and it should not be jeopardised,” he had said at a function of Indian Council for Agricultural Research.

But, the environment ministry is not willing to take Pawar’s blame for slowing down of the GM trials. Instead, it has accused the states of stifling GM research. “Around 50 approvals given by GEAC have not been agreed by the state governments,” the ministry functionary said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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