Veerappa Moily clears field trials of GM crops

Environment minister Veerappa Moily on Thursday said that he has given approval to GM crops after his apprehensions on their safety was addressed and said the approval would be subject to some environmental conditions.

Updated on: Feb 28, 2014, 01:50:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Union environment ministry has given a go ahead to the field trials of Genetically Modified (GM) food crops including rice and wheat.

The move comes even as the environment ministry has not prescribed scientifically validated bio-safety protocol and the Supreme Court is yet to decide on the efficacy of the trials.

Environment minister Veerappa Moily on Thursday said that he has given approval to GM crops after his apprehensions on their safety was addressed and said the approval would be subject to some environmental conditions.

But, he did not elaborate on his apprehensions and how they were addressed in such a short span of time. “We will not allow trials unless agreed by the state governments,” Moily said, terming it as one of the conditions to be imposed. But, there is nothing new in this as former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had introduced the concept of seeking no objection certificate from the state government before conducting trials.

Around half of the Indian states have already rejected the GM companies bid to get field trials done. Only states like Punjab, Maharashtra, Haryana and Gujarat have allowed field trials and other such as Bihar, Karnataka, West Bengal, Odisha and Kerala have taken a policy decision against GM crops.

The minister’s bio-safety conditions are based on the recommendations of the committee of secretaries on safety, who do not have much experience on GM crops. Ministry sources said they have prescribed generic conditions like earmarking the field where the trials where happen to ensuring that the crop is not mixed with non-GM crops.

Going by these conditions, the environment ministry cleared trials of over 200 GM crops including field varieties such as wheat, maize and rice.

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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