NOTE: One reason why India's apex GM regulatory body, the GEAC, may have been willing to promote the interests of the GM crop developers to State governments and others, may be that the GM crop developers have been well represented among India's GM regulators! 
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MoEF move on GM crops provokes massive protests
Nitin Sethi
The Times of India, June 10 2012
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-10/developmental-issues/32155202_1_field-trials-gm-crop-geac

NEW DELHI: The environment ministry's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee meant to regulate GM crop release has been hit with a storm of protest from the state governments and activists for stepping out of its domain to promote the cause of project developers with the state governments instead of merely assessing the scientific safety of the proposals they recieve.

Approvals from the GEAC are mandatory for any field trials or release of GM crops by project developers.

But more than a year back, several states had objected to GM crop developers especially those experimenting inwith food crops starting experiments in their fields without the knowledge or permission of state governments. With agriculture being a state subject under the Constitution, the ministry altered its rules, making it mandatory for GM crop promoters to seek no-objection certificates from the state governments before launching experiments even if the GEAC had granted permission to do so.

With several state governments wary of the impact of GM food crops on the farmers and fields in their domain, such certificates became hard to come by for the proponents of the technology. States such as Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal refused trials based on precautionary principles and lack of clear scientific evidence about safety.

Several of the GM crop developers came back to the GEAC demanding that it extend the agreed upon periods of experiments or to give them an open license to experiment in which ever suitable state they got the nod to operate in. In parallel they asked the GEAC to prod the state governments to process the NOCs in their favour. The GEAC was also approached by the seed industries, the Union ministry of agriculture its Review Committee on Genetic Manipulation (RCGM) to remove the precondition for the final nod from state governments.

Though the GEAC or the environment ministry did not overrule its earlier condition of seeking nod from the state governments, the minutes of the GEAC meetings show, it began peddling the case of the GM developers to secure NOCs from the states.

The GEAC decided to hold "dialogue" with state governments. In what several state governments have complained is a patronizing view, the GEAC said that the issue of non issuance of NOC by the state governments is mainly due to lack of clarity on the role of state governments lack of awareness on highly technical issues associated with biotechnology and biosafety measures."

Pushing its mandate even further the GEAC suggested that states should accept the GEAC expert view at face value and look at only monitoring the experiments. It even offered to 'sensitise' the state government officials at the annual Kharif conference in February 2012, noting that their "presentation would essentially encompass the comprehensive GEAC process for biosafety assessment, the safety measures prescribed during field trials, compliance of guidelines for GM crop field trials, the reason for introducing NOC and the expected role of state governments with respect to compliance monitoring and issuance of NOC."

In a particular case in April where the Rajasthan government cancelled the NOC it had earlier given for trials of GM mustard trials by Delhi University the GEAC stepped in to criticize the state government on record. Berating the decision of the state government, it said, "This does not appear to be a good enough reason to withdraw NOC at this late stage... As far as the instant case is concerned, the field trials which were coming to a closure may be allowed to be completed."

Stepping on toes of the states and dismissing concerns for a lack of clarity and use of precautionary principle, the GEAC said, "The Committee opined that decision of the State Government of Rajasthan is rather arbitrary as the direction for withdrawal does not state any proof of harm or non compliance."