Send Biodiversity Bill to Standing Committee: Jairam Ramesh to LS Speaker

New Delhi, Dec 17 (IANS) A day after Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav introduced the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Lok Sabha, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla against the government's decision of referring the Bill to a Select Committee and not to the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

Bhupender Yadav had introduced the Bill on Thursday amid din created by the Opposition. There was no debate and the House was soon adjourned. The government then sent the Bill to a Select Committee.

On Friday, Ramesh, as the Chairman of Parliament's Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, shot off a letter to Om Birla expressing his and his party's "strongest possible protest" against the government's move to refer the Bill to a Select Committee and not the Standing Committee.

"I don't wish to say more on the motivations of the government to bypass the Standing Committee concerned and refer the contentious Bill to a Select Committee. The motivations are obvious. All I wish to say is that the move is a deliberate insult to the Standing Committee.

"The fact that I am its Chairperson does not matter. What is important is the dignity of the Standing Committee itself," he wrote, adding, "I hope you will not allow this to happen and will refer the Bill to the Standing Committee concerned, which is fully conscious of its responsibilities."

The Bill seeks to bring in an amendment that will facilitate research, patenting and encourage Ayush and other alternative Indian medicine systems, and decriminalise certain provisions for exempting local traditional knowledge, such as seeds, by the community, registered practitioners of indigenous medicines without harming the environment. It also seeks to encourage cultivation of medicinal plants while using the biological resources.