The Supreme Court of India by its order on November 22 , allowed a Special Leave Petition filed by Environment Support Group (ESG), Bengaluru, setting aside the 2nd December 2013 decision of the Karnataka High Court transferring the Public Interest Litigation to the National Green Tribunal.
The PIL, thus restored, challenges the lack of action by India’s environment and biodiversity regulatory authorities against M/s Monsanto et al committing biopiracy in promoting B.t. Brinjal (India’s first GMO food)[2] and also highlights the regulatory failures of the authorities in conserving biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge and rights.
In 2012, ESG filed a Public Interest Litigation before the High Court of Karnataka drawing attention to serious criminal acts of biopiracy committed by M/s Mahyco, M/s Monsanto (now owned by M/s Bayer) and various Indian and American public agricultural universities (viz. University of Agricultural Sciences – Dharwad, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University – Coimbatore, Indian Institute of Vegetable Research – Varanasi, Cornell University – New York/USA) in promoting B.t. Brinjal.
The PIL had drawn attention to the fact that the biodiversity regulatory system of the country, constituted by the National Biodiversity Authority, State Biodiversity Boards and Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Right Authority, amongst others, had comprehensively failed in their statutory and constitutional duty to ensure strict compliance with applicable laws and safeguards relating to access, use and conservation of sovereign bioresources of India.
Based on verifiable documentary evidence submitted by ESG to various authorities, which had not been duly attended to or even dismissed, the PIL made a case of continuing failure of the regulatory system to initiate action against the egregious act of biopiracy.
In particular, attention was drawn to the fact that 16 local farmer varieties of brinjal (which are indigenous to India, including Udupi Gulla [variety which has a GI tag), and which also constitute sovereign bioresources of local farmers and communities, had been accessed illegally to produce Bt. Brinjal as a proprietary and profitable product of the transnational and Indian corporations.
The Petition further highlighted that the lack of care on the part of the regulatory system to protect bioresources and associated traditional rights and knowledge would be exploited by corporates for unprecedented profit, as was already the case with Bt. Cotton.
It also pointed out numerous defects and lacunae in the prevailing biodiversity conservation laws which directly contributed to potential irreversible loss of India’s biodiversity and associated traditional knowledge.
It was argued that all of this would directly threaten the livelihoods of farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, artisans, AYUSH practitioners, tribal and indigenous communities and other such natural resources dependent people whose existence is directed and intricately dependent on sustainable access to such natural resources.
Moreover, it was pointed out that conservation of such bioresources is critical to securing India’s biodiversity, and towards ensuring medicinal properties of the bioresources is made accessible to the country’s massive population, most of whom rely on Indian systems of medicine.
