Environment clearance to Great Nicobar Project given without adequate study: Jairam Ramesh

The ecological assessments cited by the Union government to clear the Great Nicobar Island development project do not fulfill the statutory requirements, Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said in a letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav. He demanded that the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted on directions of National Green Tribunal (NGT) on the project be made public.

Mr. Ramesh was addressing the government’s claim in a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ document released on May 1, 2026, which stated that the project’s potential ecological impacts had been “comprehensively identified, assessed, and effectively managed” through a robust mechanism.

The environment clearance was given using baseline data collected “over a few days and weeks at best” and these were grossly inadequate, he said. “These reports are an insult to science and make a mockery of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) process. All my efforts to locate the comprehensive studies, detailed assessments and robust EIA and Environmental Management Plan (EMP) relied on in the FAQs have failed,” Mr. Ramesh said. 

The law mandates comprehensive EIA studies for port projects, particularly in ecologically sensitive regions such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Citing a 2009 Office Memorandum of the Ministry, the Congress leader emphasised that port projects exceeding five million tonnes per annum in the islands must undergo detailed assessments, including multi-season baseline studies, modelling, and field verification.

According to Mr. Ramesh, such studies must account for seasonal variations in biodiversity and ecological processes, requiring data collection across at least two to three seasons. He also referred to the Ministry’s sector-specific EIA manual, which prescribes multi-season data for physical, chemical and biological parameters, along with oceanographic inputs.

Further, he pointed to provisions under the Island Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019, which require comprehensive EIAs for projects located along eroding coastlines. He said satellite mapping by ISRO in 2021 had already categorised significant portions of the Galathea Bay shoreline as eroding, underscoring the need for detailed assessments.

Mr. Ramesh recalled that in 2015, then Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar had rejected a proposal to allow rapid EIA studies for coastal projects, stating that single-season data were insufficient to capture environmental impacts. This standard, he said, remains uniformly applicable across the country.

The former Minister alleged that the studies underpinning the Great Nicobar project clearance do not meet even the criteria for a rapid EIA. He cited portions of the final EIA report submitted in March 2022, which indicate that baseline environmental studies were conducted only during a three-month winter period between December 2020 and February 2021. Ignoring the necessity of conducting a multi-season study, he noted that biodiversity and ecological surveys were conducted over brief durations, in some instances lasting less than 10 days, including turtle surveys and forest reconnaissance exercises.

Mr. Ramesh drew attention to proceedings before the NGT, which in April 2023 had flagged “unanswered deficiencies” in the environmental clearance and directed the constitution of an HPC to re-examine the matter.

He criticised the Ministry for treating the HPC report as confidential, arguing that such a position undermined transparency. “When the original clearance process was in the public domain, it was difficult to understand the legality or logic of withholding a court-mandated review,” he said, urging the Minister to release the report in the interest of informed public debate.

Reiterating concerns about the project’s ecological impact, Mr. Ramesh said the Great Nicobar Island hosts globally unique biodiversity that could be irreversibly damaged. He dismissed the argument of compensatory afforestation as “bogus” and cited opinions from security experts suggesting that strategic objectives could be met without large-scale environmental disruption.