AIKS Calls Nationwide Protests on December 10, Rejects Seed Bill 2025 and ITPGRFA Compromise Proposal

The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) has issued a strong call for nationwide protests on December 10, opposing what it describes as a “triple assault” on India’s seed sovereignty and farmer rights. The farmers’ body has urged cultivators across districts, blocks and villages to participate in demonstrations and burn copies of the Draft Seed Bill 2025 along with the compromise proposal drafted at the GB11 meeting of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).

In a statement, AIKS alleged that the Union government is pursuing policies that threaten farmer livelihoods and hand over control of India’s seed sector to multinational agribusiness companies. It said the Seed Bill 2025, the Indo-US trade negotiations, and India’s silence at the GB11 session in Lima together form a coordinated policy shift that undermines national interest.

AIKS accused the Indian delegation at GB11 of “betraying farmers” by failing to oppose a proposal that, according to the organisation, expands corporate access to India’s genetic resources without fair benefit-sharing. This silence, it said, signalled the government’s intent to support the interests of global seed corporations at the cost of domestic farmers who have safeguarded biodiversity for generations.

The organisation also linked the GB11 developments to ongoing Indo-US trade talks, which it claimed could weaken India’s patent laws, open doors for foreign seed monopolies and allow unrestricted entry of genetically modified and subsidised produce. Such concessions, AIKS argued, would undermine farmer incomes and threaten India’s food sovereignty.

The Draft Seed Bill 2025, recently introduced by the Centre, drew sharp criticism for provisions that AIKS says restrict the age-old practice of saving, exchanging and selling farm-saved seeds. The Bill’s emphasis on registered, corporate-owned seeds amounts to criminalising traditional practices and deepening corporate control over agriculture, the statement added.

Calling this policy alignment a “coordinated surrender,” AIKS demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Seed Bill 2025, rejection of the ITPGRFA compromise proposal and halting of trade negotiations that compromise farmer interests.

AIKS has chosen December 10 - a day commemorated in memory of freedom fighter Babu Genu—as the nationwide Protest Day, asserting that farmers “will not allow the government to surrender the sovereignty of the country and the rights of its food producers.”