Nitish’s letter said that Monsanto India Ltd carried trials of Bt-maize at IARI campus in Pusa on February 21 before receiving a go ahead letter from the Generic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), vide a letter dated February 24, and without seeking permission from the state government.
Ramesh said on Monday that he had directed the GEAC to probe the issue and submit a report.
According to reports the issue was raked up after GM maize sowed in a farm in Samastipur was destroyed in a hurried manner on Monday after it was found that it did not have GEAC permission. The GEAC had approved field trials at two locations in Bihar––but Pusa was not the one among them.
The chief minister demanded that representatives of the Bihar government be included in the GEAC. The chief minister also questioned the 'advantages of BT-maize saying that state’s average productivity of maize was more than the national average even without harnessing full potential of existing varieties of this cereal.
It needs to be recalled that the GEAC had communicated its decision to Monsanto India Limited on December 12, 2010 and marked a copy to various officials of the state government, which was never received by the department. Monsanto informed the state government about the trials on February 24 but the trial was already laid on February 21 without previous information to the state government,” Kumar said.
Reports also said that Bihar has got photographic evidence that suggests the crop was destroyed at 5 AM on Monday at Pusa research centre in Samastipur and replaced with a cereal after NGOs learnt about it and informed the chief minister’s office.

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