Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Sunday sharpened his criticism of the Centre’s proposed Great Nicobar Island Development Project, alleging that the Union Environment Ministry had relied on “grossly inadequate” scientific assessments while concealing crucial findings related to one of India’s most ecologically fragile regions.
In a strongly worded letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, Ramesh challenged the government’s repeated claim that the project’s environmental consequences had been comprehensively examined through a rigorous Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Environmental Management Plan (EMP).
The Congress general secretary argued that the government’s position, reiterated in the “Great Nicobar Project: FAQs” released on May 1, was contradicted by the project’s own environmental documents. According to him, the mega infrastructure initiative — which includes a transshipment port, airport township and associated power infrastructure — should have undergone far more extensive scientific scrutiny given the ecological sensitivity of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.
“The law mandates that port projects, especially those in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are subjected to comprehensive EIA studies,” Ramesh wrote, stressing that Great Nicobar’s “unique biodiversity and ecology” required environmental baseline assessments covering at least three seasons.
Citing provisions of the Environment Ministry’s 2009 Office Memorandum and sector-specific EIA manuals, he argued that the project should have included detailed physical, chemical, biological and oceanographic studies conducted across multiple seasonal cycles. He further referred to the Island Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019, claiming that significant stretches of the Galathea Bay coastline had already been classified by ISRO’s 2021 mapping exercise as erosion-prone coastal areas.
Ramesh also invoked a 2015 parliamentary statement by former Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, who had reportedly acknowledged that rapid EIAs based on one-season data were inadequate for coastal infrastructure projects because they failed to capture the full range of ecological risks.
According to the Congress leader, the final EIA report submitted in March 2022 relied primarily on a “one season study” conducted between December 2020 and February 2021. He alleged that biodiversity assessments and turtle nesting surveys were conducted only over a few days and that the report itself admitted many exercises were merely “rapid reconnaissance” surveys constrained by dense forest cover.
“These studies based on which environmental clearance has been granted are not even rapid EIAs and are based on baseline data collection over a few days and weeks at best and are grossly inadequate,” Ramesh wrote. “These reports are an insult to science and make a mockery of the EIA process.”
The Congress leader also questioned the Centre’s refusal to publicly release the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted after the National Green Tribunal’s April 2023 observation that there were “unanswered deficiencies” in the environmental clearance granted to the project.
Describing the Ministry’s claim that the HPC report was “confidential” as contrary to principles of transparency and accountability, Ramesh asked whether it was legally defensible to withhold the findings of what he described as a court-mandated reconsideration exercise when the original environmental clearance process had itself been conducted in the public domain.
“When the original environmental clearance appraisal process was in public domain, is it legal to contend that the product of a court mandated reconsideration exercise is confidential?” he asked, urging the government to release the report “in the interests of good governance and informed public debate.”
Ramesh further renewed concerns over the broader ecological consequences of the ambitious development plan, warning that the island’s globally significant biodiversity could suffer irreversible damage if the project proceeds in its current form.
“The compensatory afforestation argument is completely bogus and you know it,” he wrote, while also asserting that some strategic and security experts believed India’s geopolitical objectives in the Indian Ocean region could be achieved without “inflicting such ecological devastation.”
The Great Nicobar Island Development Project has emerged as one of the country’s most contentious infrastructure proposals, triggering a prolonged debate between the Centre, environmental groups and opposition parties.
While the Union government has projected the project as a strategically vital initiative aimed at strengthening India’s maritime and economic presence in the Indian Ocean, critics have repeatedly raised concerns over large-scale deforestation, biodiversity loss, impact on indigenous communities and the adequacy of the environmental clearance process.