Explore Business Standard
Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.
Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Thursday skipped an event organized by the newly formed Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII), a conglomeration of more than 32 multinational and domestic seed companies including Bayer, Dow Agro, Dupont Poineer, Mahyco, Metahelix, Monsanto and Namdhari.Though, official explanation was that the minister had to attend an important meeting in Parliament, but even prior to that, there were murmurs of dissent against his attendance.The Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) in a letter written to Singh a day before had red-flagged the event on the ground that anybody from the government should not attend such conferences, which are organized by multinational seed companies as they have been opposing government's policies on regulating exorbitant seed prices."It is important to keep this association far from the Ministry so that they are not able to influence the policy of the Government. If they are allowed, they would like to hijack the food security .