Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. File | Photo credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
The environment ministry approved a Rs 7,200 crore infrastructure project in the Nicobar Islands without taking into account the “least environmentally disturbed” location of Campbell Bay.
This is despite the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) pointing out that the project location was selected purely on the basis of technical and financial criteria and not environmental criteria, Indian National Congress spokesman and Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh said in a letter to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.
This comes after Yadav, responding to a letter from Congress spokesperson earlier this week, wrote a detailed letter in which he raised a number of concerns over the environment ministry's approval of the project, which comprises a port, airport and town in the Nicobar Islands. Critics have pointed out that the project will involve large-scale deforestation, altering the pristine nature of the islands.
Ramesh also wrote that a National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) report which said no part of the proposed project would fall within the highly sensitive Coastal Regulation Zone 1A (CRZ 1A) was “inconsistent with the available evidence”.
The project site had 51 megapod nests and 20,668 coral colonies and Galatea was known as a critical site for turtle conservation under the National Marine Turtle Plan, 2021. “By definition, the area with corals and turtle nesting sites is in CRZ 1A and the High Powered Committee's (HPC) reclassification of it to CRZ 1 B was “hard to believe” as the results of its work had not yet been made public,” he said.
Moreover, he added, most of the projects are “commercial” and there is little reason to keep the high-level committee's report secret as the projects have strategic and defence imperatives.
While Yadav maintained that indigenous people such as the Shompeng tribe would not be affected, the Congress leader said the project would lead to a huge influx of people and tourists which the indigenous people would be “ill-equipped” to cope with.