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Centre’s bid to table BRAI Bill opposed as NGO protests outside Parliament
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Friday, 19 August, 2011, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Irum Khan, Mumbai
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The union government's plan to table the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India Bill, 2011, met with protests outside Parliament on Wednesday. Volunteers from the NGO Greenpeace were arrested by the police while unfurling a banner reading “Don't corrupt our food, stop the BRAI Bill,” in their bid to remind the government that people were against GM crops and any legislation promoting it. Several members of Parliament have opposed the Bill calling it anti-people and anti-farmer.
The BRAI was listed to be tabled in the Lok Sabha by Vilasrao Deshmukh, minister of science and technology. The Bill has been courting controversy since its inception. It intends to create a single-window-clearance system for the genetically modified (GM) crops in the country.
The new Authority is proposed to be placed under the purview of the ministry of science and technology which also has the mandate to promote the GM crops.
Basudev Acharya, CPI (M) leader of the party in Lok Sabha, commented on the Bill, “There are numerous concerns with relation to the health and environmental safety of the GM crops.”
Acharya, who is also the chairman of parliamentary standing committee on agriculture, further said, “This Bill, which reads along with other legislations like the Seed Bill and is up for tabling in this session, shows the government's real intent of siding the biotech seed corporations against the farmers and consumers of our country.”
Dr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, former union minister for rural development and MP from Bihar, while stating his opposition to the BRAI bill in the Lok Sabha called it a threat to the food safety and a recipe for destruction of agriculture and rural livelihoods.
He said, “The Bill in its current form is a classic case of conflicting interests where the ministry which is supposed to promote GM crops has been asked to regulate it for safety.”
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