Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh has expressed serious concerns over the Great Nicobar Island Project, describing the environmental impact assessments as “demonstrably inadequate.”
In a strongly worded letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, a Congress leader alleged that the project’s clearances fall “woefully short” of the ministry’s own guidelines.
“I am sorry to say yet again that the environmental impact assessments of different aspects of the Great Nicobar Island Project are demonstrably inadequate and fall woefully short of guidelines set by the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change itself,” Ramesh stated in his letter.
Citing a lack of transparency and procedural lapses, Ramesh submitted five key points for the Minister’s consideration.
He wrote, “Six-monthly compliance reports are to be made public. But after March 2024, no such compliance report has been made available. Minutes of the project monitoring committee meetings are being uploaded several months after they have been held.”
The MP noted that crucial plans from leading scientific bodies remain concealed from public view.
“The environmental clearance calls for conservation and mitigation plans to be submitted within 15 days after the clearance was granted on November 11, 2022. These plans also are not publicly available. These include the plans to be prepared by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology (SACON), the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) and the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department (ANFD).”
Expressing doubt over the reliability of the process, Ramesh said, “Some of these institutions had been asked to submit revised proposals for monitoring and mitigation plans after incorporating suggestions made by the Environmental Appraisal Committee. These plans, too, are not publicly available. Moreover, it is strange, to say the least, that such plans may have been submitted after appraisal by the committee concerned, raising doubts about their adequacy and reliability.”
The letter further alleged that the updated Environment Management Plan (EMP) is not available in the public domain.
“The updated Environment Management Plan based on existing and additional studies is not publicly available. There are at least, as far as I have been able to make out, twelve such studies by different institutions,” the letter read.
Concluding his concerns, Ramesh questioned the feasibility of the project’s proposed ecological mitigation strategies.
“A number of studies are still pending proving that the environmental clearance was granted prematurely and hastily. Some of the mitigation plans, like the large-scale relocation of coral colonies, are clearly unrealistic and almost impossible,” he added.
What is Great Nicobar Project
Located in the southernmost part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Great Nicobar Island Development Project is one of India’s most ambitious yet controversial infrastructure initiatives. Estimated to cost Rs 72,000 crore and to be implemented in phases until 2047–2050, the project aims to develop a major international container transshipment terminal at Galathea Bay, along with a dual-use airport, a power plant, and a planned township.
The government has described the project as a strategic necessity, while it has faced strong criticism from environmentalists and opposition parties over its potential adverse impact on the island’s fragile ecosystems and indigenous tribal communities, particularly the Shompen and Nicobarese.
