Congress: Suspend approvals, conduct impartial review of Great Nicobar Island megaproject

Bengaluru: On June 17, the Indian National Congress – India’s main opposition party – called on the Union government to suspend all existing approvals for the upcoming “mega infrastructure projects” on Greater Nicobar Island.

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In a opinion Senior Congressman and MP Jairam Ramesh tweeted that Congress also said the government should conduct a “thorough, impartial review” of the proposed project in view of the many “red flags” emerging while pushing through the project.>

The projects on the island — worth a total of Rs 72,000 crore — include an international transshipment port and terminal, an airport, a settlement and a power plant. Social scientists, activists and environmentalists have stressed that the projects will impact both the people — the indigenous Shompen and Nicobarese tribes who live on the island — and the biodiversity, which ranges from coral reefs to rainforest trees.

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Serious threat, red flags>

As The science of wire has previously reportedFor the huge infrastructure project on Greater Nicobar Island, the southernmost island of the Nicobar Islands complex in the Bay of Bengal, an incredible 850,000 rainforest trees are to be felled over an area of ​​130 square kilometers.

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The project will also affect more than 1,700 people belonging to the indigenous Shompen and Nicobarese communities, social scientists said. The cable. The construction of the projects will require dredging the sea and reclaiming 300 hectares of land from the sea, which will also impact more than 20,000 coral colonies around the island. >

On the other hand, the Union government has pushed ahead with the mega project citing several reasons including national security and defence requirements. The Union Environment Ministry even re-approved the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary (Galathea Bay will be where part of the project will come up) in 2021 and quickly issued both environmental and forest clearances for the project.>

In a statement tweeted by Ramesh on June 17, the Congress said the mega infrastructure projects planned by the Union government on Greater Nicobar island would pose “a serious threat” to both the island’s tribal communities and the natural ecosystem. >

It lists several “red flags” that emerged during the project initiation process, noting that the Union Ministry of Environment has given “in principle” approval for the conversion of 13,075 hectares of forest land, an area that represents about 15% of the island’s land area and “represents one of the largest forest conversions in the country in a nationally and globally unique rainforest ecosystem.”

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However, to compensate for the loss of this forest patch, afforestation is planned in Haryana, “thousands of kilometers away and in a completely different ecological zone,” the statement said. It also pointed out that the area where the project is planned is an earthquake-prone zone and experienced permanent subsidence of about 15 feet during the December 2004 tsunami. >

“The establishment of such a huge project endangers investments, infrastructure, people and the ecology,” the congressional statement said. >

The government has “compromised on procedures in its haste to obtain approval” and the project threatens the well-being and survival of the Shompen, an indigenous community classified as a particularly vulnerable tribal group, the statement added.>

“The administration did not adequately consult the islands’ tribal council, as required by law. The Greater Nicobar Island Tribal Council has indeed voiced objections to the project, claiming that authorities had previously ‘pressured’ them to sign a ‘no objection’ letter based on misleading information,” the statement said.

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The consent letter has since been revoked, it said. The government has also ignored the island’s Shompen policy announced by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which requires authorities to put the welfare of the Shompen people first when considering “large-scale development plans” in the area, the statement said.>

The statement also said that the government “seems to have omitted the statutory consultation with the Scheduled Tribes Commission required under Article 338(9) of the Indian Constitution” and the “social impact assessment” conducted under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 ignored the existence of the Shompen and the Nicobarese, it added. The mega project thus also violates the “letter and spirit” of the Forest Rights Act (2006), the statement said. >

Suspend approvals, conduct impartial review

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“In view of these numerous violations of due process, legal and constitutional provisions protecting tribal communities and the disproportionate environmental and human costs of the project, the Indian National Congress demands an immediate suspension of all approvals and the conduct of a thorough, impartial review of the proposed project, including by the concerned parliamentary committees,” the Congress statement said.>

Incidentally, India’s highest environmental court, the National Green Tribunal, said in 2023 that it would not “affect” the forest and environmental permits for the mega development project on the island of Greater Nicobar. Conservationists even pointed out how disappointing this decision of the Green Court was. >

The NGT proposed setting up a high-level committee to look into some of the issues surrounding the mega project, including its impact on the nearby coral reefs. However, the committee comprises government officials and other representatives (including members of the NITI Aayog, which has been instrumental in promoting the project) who have already offered their support to the project.

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Experts have also repeatedly pointed out the many social justice issues and human rights violations that the mega-project would bring to the indigenous communities on the island of Greater Nicobar. Former officials wrote to the Indian President in January last year, asking him to put the project on hold. In February this year, genocide experts also wrote to the President on the same topic: They said this was a “death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide”. >

“These are human rights and social justice issues that have been obscured and not given due consideration,” independent researcher Manish Chandi told The Wire. Chandi has not only been studying the island’s biodiversity for nearly two years, but and a half However, for decades he also served as a member of the Research and Advisory Board of the Ministry of Tribal Welfare from 2011 to 2019, studying the links between local communities and the natural environment on the islands. >

“Three or more Shompen community dwellings will be affected, but the EIA denies their existence on the grounds that no residential areas will be affected,” he said The cable. >

“As well Great “The Nicobarese have been demanding to return to their homeland on the west coast for years, but this is being denied to them. The proposal is to use their homeland for tourist resorts,” said Chandi.>

As Chandi had told The cable Previously, the Nicobars were relocated from their settlement in Chingenh (in the south of the island, near the east coast), which is now part of the mega project area, after the 2004 tsunami. They are currently housed in Campbell Bay, which is further north on the east coast of the Nicobar Islands. Despite their repeated requests, they have not been allowed to return to Chingenh.>

Chandi had also said earlier The cable that the unique Andaman Nicobar Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation, 1956 also protects the rights of these communities. But despite this regulation and the Forest Rights Act not being implemented, the voices of the tribal communities are still not being heard, he had stressed.>