RTI wins, Govt reaps bitter harvest

REAPING BENEFITS: CIC has ordered Govt to disclose details of GM crops and trials.

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New Delhi: Is the Department of Bio-technology guilty of promoting commercial interests of multinationals? Is it pushing for Genetically Modified (GM) crops at the cost of public health and bio-safety?

From allergies among human beings to the death of sheep that ate the crop, activists have blamed GM crops for a number of ills.

Now, in a landmark judgement, the Central Information Commission has asked the Department of Biotechnology to disclose information about these crops.

Field trials of GM brinjal, okra, rice and mustard have been on for almost a year. Environment NGO Greenpeace wanted to know where these trials were going on, the probable toxicity, allergenicity of GM crops and the details of the official meetings.

The Department of Bio Technology disclosed the locations of the field trials but nothing else.

"They withheld the other two on the grounds that it was confidential and that it would harm the commercial interest of the company," said Greenpeace Activist, Divya Raghunandan.

The Department also said that the information was under evaluation and therefore cannot be disclosed.

Effectively, it gave the go ahead for the environmental release of GM crops even before evaluating the available data on toxicity.

“Under the RTI, only certain information can be withheld. But information about toxicity and allerginity cannot be withheld on the grounds that it will harm the commercial interests of the company. After all, if it is harmful, the people have a right to know,” said legal counsel, Prashant Bhushan. Bhushan fought the case for NCPRI who sought info under RTI.

The CIC upheld people's right to know and ruled that the RCGM had to disclose whatever information it already had on the toxicity and allergenicity of genetically modified crops.

Perhaps, this was also a battle between the commercial interest of Companies and the citizen's right to know.

K K Tripathy, who represented the RCGM was silent after the judgement, refusing to comment.

Most importantly, the Commision also recognised that the issue of GM crops was of immense public interest.

However, it was a mixed judgement for the commission also ruled that the RCGM need not disclose details of its official meetings.

“The judgement could have been more forthright. Instead of saying that the Government of India should consider, the commission should have taken the decision because the law authorises him to,” said Sekhar Singh of NCPRI.

There were innumerable pitfalls of this.

"There is a conflict of interest. People on the board of the GEAC and Committees of Biotech, they are also on the board on the same multinationals seeking patents," said Bhushan.

Though the judgment means only partial victory for people's right to information, it does set a precedent of sorts when it comes to commercial interests vs public interest.