Jairam writes to Yadav flagging ‘violations’ in Great Nicobar project

All environmental and forest clearances to the Great Nicobar Island mega infrastructure project must be cancelled in view of several lapses in the way the approvals were granted, Congress parliamentarian Jairam Ramesh has demanded in a letter to environment minister Bhupender Yadav.

The project in the fragile environmental area should be reviewed thoroughly and impartially, including by the concerned parliamentary standing committees, Ramesh wrote in the letter on Saturday.

The infrastructure project has made headlines in past couple of years because of its likely impact on rare and endemic species of Great Nicobar, rainforests and the tribal population living on the island. Several scientists and environmentalists have raised concerns about the impact of such a mega project, which includes building a transshipment port, airport, township and power plant in a biodiversity hotspot.

The project will require the diversion of 13,075 ha of forest land, which is about 15% of the island’s area, and impact a nationally and globally unique rainforest ecosystem, Ramesh pointed out.

The loss of forests in Great Nicobar Island on the Bay of Bengal will be compensated by afforestation in Haryana’s Aravallis, which is around 2,500 km away, HT reported on November 28, 2022.

“Compensatory afforestation, which is no substitute whatsoever for the loss of natural biodiversity rich forests, is being planned thousands of kms away and in a vastly different ecology,” Ramesh wrote in the letter, adding that parts of the project reportedly come under areas where there are turtle nesting sites, mangroves and coral reefs, as had been noted in a National Green Tribunal order in response to petitions challenging the clearances. Rules dictate that port construction is prohibited in such an eco-sensitive zone.

However, a committee set up by the tribunal has recently concluded that the port does not fall in such an area but in a lower category where port construction is allowed. The panel’s conclusions are at variance with the information submitted by the Andaman and Nicobar Coastal Management Authority, Ramesh accused.

It’s operations have been “opaque”, Ramesh said. “Details on its ground-truthing activities and its report has not been made public and the new information that would have justified the recategorization of the land has not been provided to stakeholders,” he wrote.

The Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar had in November 2022 withdrawn the no-objection certificate (NOC) given in August that year for diversion of land — roughly half of which is tribal reserve land — for the controversial Great Nicobar Township and other infrastructure projects, HT reported on April 14, 2023. In another letter dated August 20, 2022, the council had requested the Union territory administration to facilitate the relocation of the Nicobarese of Great Nicobar Island to their pre-2004 Tsunami villages at the earliest.

“The project can potentially result in the genocide of the Shompen, an indigenous community classified as a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG). The project has been rammed through in violation of all legal and policy safeguards for the protection of tribal groups,” Ramesh wrote in his letter to Yadav.

The tribal council was not adequately consulted, as is legally required, Ramesh said. The authorities had earlier “rushed them (tribals)” into signing a no objection letter based on misleading information and that the letter has since been revoked, he added.

Further, the island’s Shompen policy, notified by the Union ministry of tribal affairs, which requires authorities to prioritise the tribe’s welfare when considering “large scale development proposals”, was neglected, alleged Ramesh. The project violates the letter and spirit of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, which holds the Shompen as the sole legally empowered authority to protect, preserve, regulate and manage the tribal reserve, he said.

The coastline where the port and project is proposed to come up is an earthquake prone zone and saw a permanent subsidence of about 15 ft during the tsunami of December 2004, Ramesh claimed. “Locating such a massive project here deliberately jeopardises investment, infrastructure, people and the ecology...given the numerous violations of due processes, all clearances accorded to this short-sighted project must be suspended. The proposed project should be reviewed thoroughly and impartially, including by parliamentary committees concerned,” he said in his letter.

HT sought a response from Yadav on the contents of the letter and the lapses indicated by Ramesh but did not receive a response immediately.

On Thursday, when Ramesh had raised these concerns in Rajya Sabha, Yadav said all regulations have been followed to issue environmental clearances. “We consulted experts, decided area for compensatory afforestation, consulted scientific institutions like the Zoological Survey of India and Botanical Survey of India,” he had said.

The total estimated project cost for the port, airport, power plant and trunk infrastructure for township for the development of Great Nicobar Island is ₹81,834.22 crore, which includes the estimated budget for wildlife conservation, compensatory afforestation, tribal welfare, conservation and mitigation measures during construction and operation of port, airport, township and power plant and the monitoring program, the environment ministry had informed Parliament on Thursday.

In the information provided by the project proponent, Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation, available on ministry’s Parivesh website, the cost was ₹75000 crore.