New Delhi: Congress on Sunday highlighted serious issues surrounding the Great Nicobar development project, including ecology, tribal rights, transparency and security, insisting these must be aired in Parliament, PTI reported.
The party accused the Modi government of scrambling into damage control following Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Great Nicobar last week.
In a detailed statement, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh noted: “The Modi Government, clearly in damage control mode after the hugely impactful visit of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, to Great Nicobar on April 28 2026, issued a press note on the Great Nicobar Island Development Project three days later.”
Ramesh, a former environment minister, criticized the government’s May 1 FAQ response for sidestepping concerns raised by local communities, environmentalists, anthropologists, academics, and experts.
“This press note does not address any of the serious concerns that have been raised on it by local affected communities, environmentalists, anthropologists, academics, civil society experts and other professionals,” he said. He added that he had flagged these issues directly to the Union Minister of Environment, Forests & Climate Change on September 10 and 27, 2024.
Gandhi, during his April 28 visit, had branded the Campbell Bay project in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as “one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against the natural and tribal heritage of the country.” The government’s statement countered that the initiative bolsters India’s Andaman Sea presence, merging strategic, economic, and ecological goals with safeguards for indigenous groups.
In his detailed four-page statement, Ramesh outlined the key concerns. Ecologically, he dismissed the claim of using just 1.82% of island land as “irrelevant and misleading,” highlighting Great Nicobar’s singular biodiversity.
“Galathea Bay, the site of the port, is unequivocally a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is a site where port construction is not allowed. As per records of the Zoological Survey of India, Galathea Bay is home to more than 20,000 coral colonies, a key marker of a CRZ-1a categorisation. Similarly, the beach here is the most important nesting site of the Giant Leatherback turtle in the Northern Indian Ocean,” he wrote, noting record nesting this season.
He alleged coercion of bodies like the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) in clearances, followed by conflict-laden project awards, plus blacklisting of critical institutions. The National Green Tribunal’s high-powered committee was similarly biased, he claimed, and compensatory afforestation in Haryana defied ecological logic.
On tribal rights, Ramesh cited Nicobarese withdrawal of forest diversion consent in November 2022 due to concealed impacts, and recent claims of forced land surrender. For the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), he questioned consent from an uncontacted hunter-gatherer group: “It is not clear then how the project authorities have taken their informed consent, which is both ethically appropriate and legally mandated.”
Ramesh challenged the airport’s projected 10 million annual passengers against Port Blair’s 1.8 million, flagged confidential clearance documents, and invoked retired Admiral Arun Prakash’s view separating security from the “development project.”
“These considerations must, at the very least, be discussed and debated in a Parliamentary forum,” he concluded.
