On Monday, October 12, 2026, lawyer Prashant Bhushan urged the Supreme Court to hear with urgency the contempt plea challenging the imminent commercial release of gene-edited rice varieties in India.
The contempt petition explains that the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, through an Office Memorandum of March 30, 2022, exempted genome-edited plants without foreign DNA from being regulated as transgenic products.
The memorandum stated that the Department of Biotechnology had recommended that the SDN1 and SDN2 (Site-Directed Nuclease) genome-edited products free from exogenous introduced DNA "be exempted from biosafety assessment".
On May 4, 2025, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced that Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) scientists had made a breakthrough, and Drought and Salt Tolerance (DST) varieties of rice had been discovered through gene-editing technology.
News reports from August 2026 indicate that large-scale seed planting of gene-edited varieties is planned for November this year, to enable commercial planting in the kharif season of 2027.
Hindu BusinessLine reported on August 8, 2026 that two tonnes of Pusa DST Rice-1 have been kept, and will suffice to start seed multiplication in the rabi season, with transplanting around November 2026 — next month.
The contempt petition states that India is the centre of origin of rice, with an abundant rich diversity in rice, with over 1,00,000 accessions at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources.
The exemption to SDN1 and SDN2 puts at risk India's enormous rice diversity through contamination. This illegal manoeuvre of the Union government is intended to escape regulation under the "Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro Organisms, Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells Rules, 1989".
The contempt petition argues that all categories of gene editing, including SDN1 and SDN2, unquestionably fall within the scope of India's rules governing the manufacture, use, import/export and storage of genetically modified organisms. According to the terminology of the rules, gene-editing is biotechnology, a gene technology, and genetic engineering. SDN1, SDN2 and SDN3 are the three classes of edit with site-directed nucleases, depending on how the cell break is repaired. The Office Memorandum exempted SDN1 and SDN2 from the Rules of 1989.
The contempt petition states that bypassing the regulatory framework through an Office Memorandum is ultra vires; this is "regulatory anarchy," the result of a "criminal conflict of interest that has blurred the distinction between regulators and the GMO corporations."
Media reports indicate that the government is set to sign MoUs with US-headquartered agriculture firm Corteva and MIT/Broad Institute, also in the US, which holds the patent for the CRISPR-Cas12a tool, also used to develop DRR Dhan 100 (Kamala), the other gene-edited variety set to be commercially released in the kharif of 2027, about which not much information is available in the public domain.
India is the world's largest rice producer. Together with China, India accounts for half the total global rice production. India also accounts for over 40% of global rice exports. Rice is the staple food of over half the nation's population, and any contamination will be irreversible and will have huge health impacts.
If this plan is implemented, and seed multiplication occurs on such a wide scale, as reported by the media, it is certain that India's rice strains, including wild varieties, will be irreversibly contaminated.
Pusa DST Rice 1 is derived from MTU1010, cultivated in the rabi season in southern states. This variety is sensitive to abiotic stresses including drought and salinity, and the Hindu BusinessLine report revealed that scientists had edited the SDN1 mutant of the drought and salt tolerance gene, and conducted field trials in 2023 and 2024.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan represents petitioner Aruna Rodrigues, who has been in the SC since 2005 seeking a moratorium on genetically modified (GM) food crops. (The only legally permitted GM crop in India is Bt cotton, approved in 2002 and commercially released after 2005.)
The contempt plea argues that gene-edited Pusa DST 1 is being commercially released in complete disregard for the Rules of 1989, and is therefore in contempt of court. This release is planned to occur with no safety testing, and without the national policy on genetic modification of crops that the SC had, in 2024, directed the government to formulate.
The contempt petition cites renowned cell biologist and Salk Professor David Schubert, who had warned: "Once a foreign company controls the seed market for any single food plant, seed for more GE plants will follow, and the Company will have tremendous power over both the farmers, which constitute a major segment of the Indian population, as well as the political process. This has clearly happened in the US, where Monsanto is a major financial supporter of both political parties and has political appointees that dictate both national and international agri policy."
A direct consequence of the introduction of gene-edited varieties would be the severe impact on India's organic export market. India's food chain would be irreversibly contaminated, and a rise in diseases including cancer should be anticipated.
The herbicide glyphosate, for instance, was first introduced in the US in 1974, and HT (herbicide tolerant) crops were genetically engineered soon afterwards. Independent studies have shown a surge in cancer cases since then.
Prof Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, who specializes in the regulation of gene technology, explained in an email to petitioner Aruna Rodrigues, and is quoted in the contempt petition: "Gene/genome editing is a subset of the techniques used in genetic modification. It extends to any use of a gene technology for altering or amending genomes, whether the outcome is insertion of DNA, deletion of DNA, or changes to nucleotides within a DNA sequence. Gene/genome editing routinely produces organisms with DNA insertions. It would be a scientifically unjustified assumption that when not intending to add 'foreign' DNA the outcome could be assumed to not have 'foreign' DNA inserted."
The Union Agriculture Ministry is thus in significant error when it argues that gene editing does not involve the introduction of DNA from another species. In so doing it seeks to mislead the SC and the public.
The Contempt Petition asserts that genome editing is a genetic engineering method that uses nucleases or molecular scissors to intentionally introduce alterations into the genome of living organisms. There is thus no scientific justification for exempting certain types of GMO such as SDN1 and SDN2 from India's GMO rules.
The tools of CRISPR-Cas ("clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats"), a technology researchers use to selectively modify the DNA of living organisms, are precise and powerful. The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, in a January 2023 position statement, warned that SDN1 risks are not resolved by the absence of inserted foreign genes — unintended mutations accumulate at every stage of the editing process, and not only at the intended cut site. Gene editing is patented technology, and dependence on it will undermine the sovereignty of India's farmers.
The field trial data released by the government contradicts the claims made for increased yield and improved traits by the gene-edited varieties.
In Kharif 2023, ICAR reported that drought and salt tolerance data was not available "due to limited seed quantity" — the claims made to assert the need for gene editing thus could not be confirmed in the field trials.
Even the claim of increased yield proved wrong, according to data from the All India Coordinated Research Projects (AICRP, 2023) of the ICAR; Pusa DST 1 was shown underperforming in six of eight locations.
The SC must not further delay hearing the contempt petition. The Rajasthan High Court in an October 2025 order sought that the Centre notify regulations for GMO — petitioner Kritesh Oswal and others pointed to the import of GMO oils like canola even though the Centre had no notification governing such import.
In July 2025, petitioner Aruna Rodrigues wrote to the Union agriculture minister detailing the laxity in regulatory authorities granting approval for GM crops, and the huge conflict of interest.
The contempt petition seeks a pro tem *injunction on all genetically modified and gene-edited plantings (field trials and commercial release) during the course of the hearing of the petition. It seeks a halt on imports of viable seed, in contempt of SC orders; and a halt on GMO food imports, which will contaminate India's food chain.
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*Freelance journalist
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