———- Forwarded message ———-
From: GM Free India <indiagmfree@gmail.com>
Date: 26 October 2017 at 13:49
Subject: Our thanks to GEAC, for running the Great Indian Circus in the name of GMO regulation
To: geac.secretariat@gov.in, asap.moefcc@gov.in, gyanesh.bharti@ias.nic.in, Madhumita Biswas <mbiswas2012in@gmail.com>, membersecretarygeac@gmail.com
Cc: kveluthambi@rediffmail.com, crb26@hotmail.com, sesikeran B <sesikeran@gmail.com>, nppbg@pau.edu, kk.sinha@nic.in, srrao@dbt.nic.in, aptesk@barc.gov.in, ddgcs.icar@nic.in, js_sandhuin@yahoo.com, kumarv@icmr.org.in, sonti@ccmb.res.in, Swati_sri_2002@yahoo.com, ppa@nic.in, ccb.cpcb@nic.in, jsseeds-agri@nic.in, O P GOVILA <govilaop@gmail.com>, lutherrangreji@gmail.com, vvr3@vsnl.com, bpsrinivasana@yahoo.com, renee@ces.iisc.ernet.in, Vijendra Mishra <vijendramishra.niftem@gmail.com>, rameshvsonti@gmail.com, sushilanitagupta@yahoo.com, Raman Kant Mishra <mishraramankant@gmail.com>, WARRIER <warrier@nic.in>, saranya.p@gov.in
To:
Chairperson & Members of Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee.
Dear Madams and Sirs,
Sub: Our thanks to you, for running the Great Indian Circus in the name of GMO regulation
Greetings! This is a letter to thank you for showing yourselves again and again for what you truly are – incompetent, unscientific and outright undependable.
We thank you because we as citizens need not always expend our valuable energies in showcasing your lack of competence and reliability – you yourselves do it so shoddily. May be the only honest part of the apex regulatory body for GMOs in India. Thank you.
We also want to thank you for giving us and the world an expansive definition of what constitutes a “typographical error”. Indeed! Since we want to put this letter of ours on record in the public domain, we take the trouble of giving the concrete illustration of such a typographical error of recording a decision, as demonstrated by GEAC, in this box below:
Example of “an inadvertant (sic) typographical error”
May 11th 2017 meeting version, as on October 24th 2017:
“Matters related to environmental release of transgenic mustard are kept pending for further review, subsequent to receipt of various representations from different stakeholders”.
May 11th 2017 meeting version, as on October 25th 2017:
“GEAC recommended the proposal (for environmental release of transgenic mustard hybrid DMH-11 and parental lines) with certain terms and conditions for further approval by the Competent Authority.”
If the nation cannot trust you to even write your own minutes faithfully, how can we trust you with our health and environment to be protected from risks of modern biotechnology? And you took 5 months and turned down 3 RTI applications for these minutes, for this kind of a circus? You have reinforced what we always knew about you, and we thank you for the same.
We witnessed your devious version of minuting meetings, when you summed up detailed evidence presented by civil society experts on July 18th 2016 to you on the matter of GM mustard in a flippant unfaithful manner (http://www.moef.gov.in/divisions/csurv/geac/Special%20GEA%20Meeting.pdf) whereas we had to record our own minutes of what transpired (http://indiagminfo.org/minutes-of-the-july-18th-2016-special-geac-meeting/) and this episode had to be written about by the Supreme Court appointee into GEAC, Late Dr Pushpa Bhargava as a special article for Economic & Political Weekly (http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/44-45/insight/genetically-modified-mustard-and-indias-future.html).
For years now, we watched your errors of omission and commission. In your constant endeavour to protect the biotech industry (to heck with common citizens’ interest, of course!), we have seen how field trial violations caught by your own Central Compliance Committee visits are explained away with minutes that never had a stated-explanation (http://agrariancrisis.in/2013/04/05/illegal-planting-of-gm-corn-during-field-trials-by-monsanto-in-uas-dharwad-karnataka-gm-free-coalition/). We have seen outright lies in the recent past when GEAC started claiming that it has not received any complaint about, or heard of illegal herbicide tolerant cotton cultivation spreading across the country (http://www.moef.gov.in/sites/default/files/geac/decision-jul-95.pdf). We look forward to your little circus of doctoring past meeting minutes, where explicit discussions happened on such HT cotton illegal cultivation. We have witnessed your lies around presence or absence of members and their participation in sub-committee meetings, including in the case of GM mustard (http://indiagminfo.org/health-expert-in-geac-sub-committee-our-reaction-to-ministrys-defence/).
We thank you sincerely for once again giving us an opportunity to showcase how unreliable you truly are. We want to repeat once again that we don’t trust you to do a single task reliably, leave alone fulfill your real mandate as per the laws of the land.
There are of course a few, rare individual experts in the GEAC who would be concerned and embarrassed by the processes that are run in the Committee, by the Committee. We respect their sentiments and sympathise with them. We urge them to do their sincere bit to improve the regulatory regime, and put forward analysis and views that protect ordinary citizens.
We will continue our struggle to expose GEAC’s incompetence, lack of rigour and independence and your sheer lack of reliability, helped in this manner by you. Citizens, media, lawmakers, state governments and all others are witness to how you function, and you are definitely helping us in our honest, committed struggle. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Coalition for a GM-Free India
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Coalition for a GM-free India
Website: www.indiagminfo.org, email : indiagmfree@gmail.com, Facebook page – GM Watch India