The Central Government is working on its ambitious Great Nicobar Project with the aim of strengthening India's presence in the Andaman Sea and South-East Asia, but it is also being said that it will cause significant damage to the environment. Congress has been continuously raising issues related to this. Rahul Gandhi has also criticized this project. Now Jairam Ramesh on Friday wrote a letter to Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav on the Great Nicobar Island Project, in which he raised the issue of lack of transparency in the project. It also said that the environmental impact assessment of various aspects of this project is “clearly inadequate”.
This new letter from former Environment Minister Ramesh comes after several letters exchanged between him and Union Minister Yadav on this project in the last few years. The Congress leader said in his new letter, "Thank you very much for your reply of June 13 to my letter of June 3, even though it was disappointing and not satisfactory. But I am once again sad to say that the Environmental Impact Assessment of various aspects of the Great Nicobar Island Project is clearly not adequate. It is much less than the guidelines set by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change itself."
Ramesh said that detailed information about these was given in his earlier letter, to which the minister had “no useful answer”. He said, "You say that the conditions required for environmental clearance are being continuously monitored. But in this regard, I can put this point for your consideration. The compliance report has to be made public every 6 months. Whereas after March 2024, no such compliance report has been issued. Even the important points of the meeting of the Project Monitoring Committee are being uploaded several months after its occurrence."
The Congress leader said that under the environmental clearance, conservation and mitigation plans have to be submitted within 15 days of getting the clearance on November 11, 2022, but these plans have still not been made public. These also include plans prepared by Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Salim Ali Center for Ornithology.
Ramesh said that some of these institutions were asked to submit revised proposals for monitoring and mitigation plans after incorporating the suggestions of the Environmental Appraisal Committee. These plans are also not available to the people. Also, it is strange that such plans would have been submitted after the appraisal of the concerned committee, which casts doubt on their adequacy and reliability.
He said that the updated environmental management plan based on existing and additional studies is also not publicly available. He said, "As far as I am aware, there are at least 12 such studies by different institutions. Many studies are still pending which prove that the environmental clearance was given prematurely and in a hurry. While some of the mitigation plans, such as large-scale relocation of coral colonies, are clearly unrealistic and almost impossible."
The Congress leader said that he had already requested that the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) be released along with the field survey of the National Center for Sustainable Coastal Management, on which the HPC's questionable conclusion regarding the Coastal Regulation Zone status of the proposed transshipment port was based.
Ramesh said, "At the end of the day, whatever I am asking to be made public does not in any way come in the way of achieving the vital strategic objective, and this is what has now happened with the Great Nicobar Island Project. Serious questions over its Environmental Impact Assessment and legitimate concerns over its serious ecological consequences have gone unanswered and unresolved by your sad and evasive responses." He said, “I am unable to understand how so much non-transparency is being adopted to hide reports, studies and plans.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the Congress had also attacked the central government on this project, saying that the transshipment port at Galathea Bay is a recipe for ecological disaster and will lead to large-scale destruction of coral colonies. Then Ramesh had also written two letters to Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has also opposed this project. He said the government's contention that the project is about defense and a transshipment port is a "lie", and alleged that it is actually meant to benefit a businessman so that he can build hotels and casinos on India's coastline, and that too on the most vital and irreplaceable ecological land.
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had also released a more than 16-minute video earlier this month based on his visit to Andaman and Nicobar Islands in late April. He appealed to people to sign a petition to tell the government that “we have to choose greenery over greed.”
