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The Congress party has described the proposed Rs 72,000-crore infra upgrade at the Great Nicobar Island as a “grave threat” to the island’s indigenous inhabitants and fragile ecosystem, and demanded “immediate suspension of all clearances” and a “thorough, impartial review of the proposed project, including by the Parliamentary committees concerned”.
Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar Islands, a sparsely inhabited 910-sq-km patch of mainly tropical rainforest in southeastern Bay of Bengal. Indira Point on the island, India’s southernmost point, is only 90 nautical miles (less than 170 km) from Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra, the largest island of the Indonesian archipelago.
Great Nicobar has two national parks, a biosphere reserve, small populations of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribal peoples, and a few thousand non-tribal settlers.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a cluster of 836 islands, split into two groups — the Andaman Islands to the north and the Nicobar Islands to the south — by the 150-km wide Ten Degree Channel. President Droupadi Murmu visited the archipelago in February this year, and interacted with some of its indigenous inhabitants.
So why does India want to develop Great Nicobar, and why has the proposed three-phase, 30-year project faced sustained criticism from conservationists, wildlife biologists, naturalists, and some local tribal councils?
The mega infrastructure project — which is being implemented by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO) — is proposed to include an International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT), a greenfield international airport with a peak hour capacity to handle 4,000 passengers, a township, and a gas and solar based power plant spread across 16,610 hectares.
The project for the “holistic development” of Great Nicobar Island was implemented after a report by NITI Aayog. A pre-feasibility report flagged the opportunity to leverage the strategic location of the island, which is roughly equidistant from Colombo in Sri Lanka to the southwest and Port Klang (Malaysia) and Singapore to the southeast.
It is close to the Malacca Strait, the main waterway that connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, and the ICTT is expected to “allow Great Nicobar to participate in the regional and global maritime economy by becoming a major player in cargo transshipment’’. A proposed “greenfield city” will tap into both the maritime and tourism potential of the island.
The site for the proposed ICTT and power plant is Galathea Bay on the southeastern corner of Great Nicobar Island, where there is no human habitation. The project was granted in-principle forest clearance and environmental clearance in October 2022. A detailed project report (DPR) has been prepared, and the union government is likely to invite bids for the initial phase of construction of the terminal in the coming months.
The Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean region are of vital strategic and security interest to India as the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy seeks to expand its footprint across the region. India is wary of a build-up of Chinese maritime forces at the Indo-Pacific choke points of especially Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok. China’s attempts to expand its footprint in the region includes building a military facility at Coco Islands (Myanmar) lying just 55 km to the north of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
In April this year, The Indian Express reported that a major military infrastructure upgrade was underway at the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, including revamping airfields and jetties and building additional logistics and storage facilities, a base for military personnel, and a robust surveillance infrastructure. The upgrade is aimed at facilitating the deployment of additional military forces, larger and more warships, aircraft, missile batteries, and troops.
Close surveillance of the entire area around the archipelago, and the building up of a strong military deterrence at Great Nicobar is of vital importance to India’s national security.
The proposed infra upgrade has been opposed on grounds of the threat it poses to the ecology of the islands. The opposition — by wildlife conservation researchers, anthropologists, scholars, and civil society apart from the Congress — has focused on the potentially devastating impact on the Shompen, a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) of hunter-gatherers with an estimated population of a few hundred individuals who live in a tribal reserve on the island.
It has been alleged that the project violates the rights of the tribal population, and will impact the island’s ecology with the felling of nearly a million trees. It is feared that the port project will destroy coral reefs with spinoff effects on the local marine ecosystem, and pose a threat to the terrestrial Nicobar Megapode bird and leatherback turtles who nest in the Galathea Bay area.
The Congress statement, issued by senior leader and former Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, has also pointed out that the proposed port is in a seismically volatile zone that saw permanent subsidence of about 15 ft during the 2004 tsunami. The statement has accused the local administration of not consulting the Tribal Council of Great and Little Nicobar Islands adequately as per legal requirements. In November 2022, the tribal council revoked a no-objection certificate it had issued for diversion of about 160 sq km of forest land, saying they had not been given full information.
In April 2023, the Kolkata Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) declined to interfere with the environmental and forest clearance granted to the project. The Tribunal, however, ordered that a high-power committee should be constituted to look into the clearances. There is no clarity yet on whether the committee, consisting mainly of government representatives, has submitted its report.
An appeal against the NGT’s order itself was dismissed in 2023.
