After Haryana Bt Brinjal find, activists seek pan-India probe

NEW DELHI: A day after confirmation of illegal cultivation of genetically modified (GM) brinjal or Bt Brinjal at a small farm in Haryana’s Fatehabad district, a group of farm activists wrote to the Union environment ministry on Saturday seeking its direction to government agencies for time-bound investigations beyond Haryana as they suspect that the cultivation of the crop may not be limited to a lone farm in a single state.
“We also demand that the ministry, along with Haryana government, take up widespread testing to ascertain contamination, if any, from the illegal Bt Brinjal,” said farm activist Kavitha Kuruganti of the Coalition for a GM-free India in a letter to the environment ministry, expressing the need to unearth the entire supply chain of illegal seeds.
It was the coalition, with several activists and experts from across the country attached to it, that first alerted the ministry on the illegal cultivation in Haryana last month. Its findings prompted the state government to get tests done at a central lab of the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) which on Friday confirmed cultivation of transgenic variety of brinjal at a farm at Ratia block in Fatehabad district.
Under Environment Protection Act 1986 and 1989 Rules on GMOs and hazardous micro-organisms, a state-level biotechnology committee, headed by the chief secretary, can ask its agencies to initiate probes and take steps for stopping illegal cultivation of GM crops. The farm activists, meanwhile, fear that the episode, if not checked now, may push the transgenic variety of brinjal in India as a fait accompli the way it had happened in the case of Bt Cotton 17 years ago.