Field destroyed for field trials of GM rice

Chattisgarh Government has also questioned the Centre on allowing trails without informing the state government, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 25, 2006, 01:24:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Chattisgarh Government on Thursday destroyed a field near capital city of Raipur, where field trials of GM rice were being done and has questioned the Centre on allowing trails without informing the state government.

Secretary Agriculture Pankaj Diwedi told HT on Friday that the field trails were allowed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests in a 'casual' manner. "They should have written a letter to us informing that the state has been selected for the trails. Moreover, the company took no permission from us even though agriculture is on the concurrent list of the Constitution," he said. An inquiry to look into the violations has also been ordered and it will submit its report by Monday.

On Thursday, a government team led by Agriculture Minister Nankiram Kawar got the field destroyed where the trails were being conducted. The farm is owned by Jagdishlal Arora and is within the city limits of Raipur. "It is very strange that a farm within city limits was chosen instead of proper agriculture land. The plot is very close to human and animal habitat," Diwedi said.

The government action was the fallout of complaints by NGOs and agriculture groups alleging violation of norms while planting GM rice. Moreover, the regional agriculture scientists also had no knowledge about the trails being conducted there.

According to Kavita Karunganti of the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, the trials were being conducted in violation of the norms and nobody knows whether safety precautions were adopted before planning the seeds. The GM rice seeds had been taken away by the company, she said. The local municipal body or panchayat was not informed about the trials, a mandatory requirement under Genetic Engineering guidelines of MoEF.

The campaign against GM rice trials are limited to Chattisgarh. Earlier, farmer groups had destroyed GM rice crops in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana claiming that the farmer was not informed about the trials. Even the rice exporters association has called the government to defer GM rice crop trials citing the US experience where large consignments of US rice was sent back by European Union and Japan, following detection of contamination.

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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