Congress leader Jairam Ramesh. File
| Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar
The Environment Ministry’s go-ahead to the ₹72,000 crore infrastructure project in the Nicobar islands had not considered the “least environmentally destructive” site at Campbell Bay.
This despite an Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) pointing out that the project location had been chosen purely on technical and financial criteria and not on environmental ones, Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh wrote in a letter to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.
This was after Mr. Yadav, earlier this week, wrote a detailed letter in response to the Congress spokesperson’s letter, where he raised a slew of concerns around the Environment Ministry’s approval of the project. The project comprises a port, airport and township in Nicobar Islands. Critics have said that this will involve large-scale deforestation and change the nature of the pristine islands.
Mr. Ramesh also wrote that the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) report saying that no part of the proposed project would come in the highly-sensitive Coastal Regulation Zone-1A, or CRZ 1A, “was at odds with the available evidence.”
There were 51 Megapode nests and 20,668 coral colonies located at the project site and Galathea was known to be a site important for turtle conservation as per the National Marine Turtle Plan, 2021. “By definition, areas with coral and turtle nesting sites are in CRZ 1A and the High Powered Committee (HPC) reclassifying it as CRZ 1 B was “hard to believe” because the results of the exercise weren’t yet public,” he said.
Moreover, the bulk of the project was “commercial” and there was thus little reason to keep the report of the High Powered Committee confidential on the grounds that the project had strategic and defence imperatives, Mr. Ramesh added.
Contesting Mr. Yadav’s claims that the native tribes, such as the Shompen, would not be affected, the Congress leader said the project would invite a large influx of people and tourists which the tribes would be “ill-equipped” to navigate.