SC reserves order on pleas relating to genetically modified mustard

New Delhi [India], January 18 : The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on a batch of pleas opposing the environmental release of genetically modified (GM) mustard.
A bench of justices BV Nagarathna and Sanjay Karol reserved the order after all the concerned parties concluded their arguments.
The apex court was hearing the pleas against the Centre's decision on the environmental release of GM mustard.
Attorney General R Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta argued on behalf of the central government while advocates Prashant Bhushan and Sanjay Parikh represented the petitioner NGOs and environmentalists in the matter.
On Wednesday, the SC had said that it would decide on the GM mustard issue on the basis of what is good for the country as it cannot go into a scientific debate on the matter.
Various petitions were moved in the Supreme Court challenging the Union Environment Ministry's decision to approve commercial cultivation of GM mustard.
In an affidavit filed earlier by the Centre, the government had submitted that the Union of India is committed to increasing farm productivity and the income of farmers through the development of low-input-high-output agriculture and making the country self-sufficient in edible oil and grain legumes. To achieve this objective, several nations around the world have safely employed genetic engineering (GE) technologies.
It said that to safely encourage this endeavour in India, an elaborate statutory scheme exists to ensure effective regulatory review for the research, development and commercial use of GE technologies.
Approximately 55-60 per cent of edible oil in India is imported. Strengthening of plant breeding programmes including the use of new genetic technologies are critical for meeting emerging challenges in Indian agriculture and ensuring food security while reducing foreign dependency, the Centre has said.
Centre had submitted that issues raised by the petitioners fall within the domain of the executive, aided by scientific and other technical experts and the research, development and use of genetic engineering technologies is a highly technical matter guided by views that emerge from scientific consensus among subject experts.
As such, it is most humbly submitted that the inquiry of the apex court may be limited to whether there is an adequate regulatory mechanism in place governing this field and whether there has been material compliance with the same, the union government had submitted.
Centre had also said that the controversy raised by the petitioners concerns a conditional approval made to the Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) for the environmental release of transgenic mustard hybrid DMH-11 and its parental lines bn 3.6 and modbs 2.99 containing barnase, barstar and bar genes before commercial release.
It further said that this conditional approval has been made after a long and exhaustive regulatory review process which commenced as far back as in 2010.
"It is to be noted that this approval of environmental release prior to commercial release is for the purpose of undertaking seed production and testing of hybrid of DMH-11 and developing new parental lines and hybrids under the supervision of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). As such, this conditional approval pertains to an environmental release prior to commercial release and is subject to necessary regulatory and technical oversight," the government has said.