Scores of farmers of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) and South Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements (SICCFM) staged a protest march in front of the residence of Union Environment Minister M Veerappa Moily in Bangalore on Tuesday. The farmers staged a protest against the decision of the Environment Ministry which gave go-ahead for the field trials of hundreds of GM (genetically modified) crops including GM varieties of rice, wheat, maize etc across the country.
The farmers were demanding that the permission, to go ahead with clearances for GM field trials, should be revoked and that he also explained the fresh basis on which he reversed his predecessor Jayanthi Natarajan’s decision to suspend approvals given by GEAC.
According to farmer leaders, Moily had told them he had not given any permission for the field trail of GM crop. According to KT Gangadhar, President of Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha(KRRS) Moily told them that he had only looked at the file and returned it” and did not approve any trials.
He said “We are not sure if Veerappa Moily is telling the truth or only presenting smart lies in front of us. If this is indeed true that he only looked at the file and returned it, this means that Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) which is meeting on March 21st 2014 to give further approvals for GM crop trials should not give any clearances.”
Jayanthi Natarajan, in her letter to the Prime Minister on 9th July 2013, said that she ‘felt it important to await the final judgment of the SC in this matter, and particularly with a view to avoid any disrespect to the Hon’ble Court directed that further proceedings may await the decision of the Supreme Court’ (which incidentally is on April 15th) which means that this view of the Minister has to continue to prevail on the regulators.
The announcement by Moily last month received flak from State Governments including the Congress-led Kerala Government. The CM responded by saying that she will not permit field trials in her State. Various States had also denied field trials in the past.besides like Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya pradesh, Chattisgarh and Rajasthan .
“This is a clear turnaround from what the Minister announced in Delhi and seemed to have done, in terms of giving a go-ahead to the 117th meeting minutes of the GEAC. If he is hiding behind semantics by saying that he did not clear field trials, we want to warn him that we will come back in greater numbers to protest these lies from him. If he is speaking the truth that he has not made any file notings at all or give clearances, we want him to give express instructions now to the regulators not to clear any trials in the upcoming meeting, given the amount of confusion prevailing on the subject”, said Chukki Nanjundaswamy, working president of KRRS.
“GM crops are the latest tools in the hands of Multinational seed companies to take control of our seeds. The decision by Moily to permit the experiments of these risky GM seeds of various companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dupont etc in our farms across the country shows that our governments are hand in glove with them in making that happen” said Kannaiayan Subramanian of SICCFM.