JOIN USConcern over powers to GSI in geo-heritage bill
A draft legislation on the protection of Indian geo-heritage sites has alarmed many fossil hunters who fear that by vesting excessive powers with Geological Survey of India, the bill would “effectively sound the death knell for all (fossil-related) research activities” outside GSI.
The scientists alleged that the bill was prepared without consulting them and was completely different from what they had proposed in 2019 to the Prime Minister’s Office after a national level consultation of experts on the need to preserve geo-heritage sites, many of which are also rich in fossils.
“The GSI by its own admission is not a research-oriented institution and specialises in other field related activities. How then should all such institutions seek the nod of the Director General, GSI (or his nominee) for any of the research performed by them? This bill will effectively sound the death knell for all research activities by non GSI stakeholders,” Ashok Sahni, Emeritus Professor at Panjab University and one of India’s foremost paleontologists told DH.
Individual scientists as well as the Society of Earth Sciences have written to the Union Ministry of Mines expressing their concerns about the draft of the proposed Geoheritage Sites and Georelics (Preservation and Maintenance) Bill, 2022, released by the government last month for public consultations.
"Our proposal was to create a multi-disciplinary National Geoheritage Authority in the lines of the National Biodiversity Authority involving experts from various fields. This basic structure was changed by awarding all powers to the GSI,” said SC Tripathi, the society’s general secretary and a former deputy director-general of GSI.
Geoheritage sites are sites of rare and unique geological, geo-morphological, mineralogical, petrological, and paleontological significance including caves, natural rock-sculptures of national and international interest. Geo-relics are any relic or material of geological significance, sediments rocks, minerals, meteorites or fossils.
The dinosaur remains of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, marine fossils of Kutch and Spiti, wood fossils of Gondwana, oldest life forms (stromatolites) of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and vertebrate fossils of Siwaliks are some of such geoheritage sites.
The ministry says that GSI has identified 32 geo-heritage sites for protection and maintenance, but its efforts were hampered due to absence of an enabling law because such sites are threatened not only by the "natural cause of decay but also by population pressure and changing socio-economic conditions."
The scientists point out that GSI’s own track records are far from being satisfactory. The track record of GSI in maintaining sites under its control like Saketi Fossil Park in Himachal Pradesh and Rahioli Dinosaur Park in Gujarat leaves much to be desired. Material excavated in Rahioli in 1983-1984 lay unattended in various GSI offices for nearly 20 years or so and in the process a lot of material was lost,” said Sahni.
"It is a hurriedly drafted bill that needs to be reviewed with wider participation,” noted Guntupalli V R Prasad, a paleontologist from Delhi University whose team recently discovered long-neck plant-eating dinosaur Titanosaurs’ fossilsed eggs from Madhya Pradesh.