NEW DELHI: The Congress on Sunday termed the Great Nicobar Island infrastructure project as a "recipe for ecological and humanitarian disaster" and said the prime minister should immediately order a pause and set up an independent panel to review it.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the Modi government is pushing ahead with the project despite several objections raised by him in the past.
"The Rs 72,000 crore mega infrastructure project in Great Nicobar Island is a recipe for ecological and humanitarian disaster. My exchanges on this unfolding tragedy with the Union Minister of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change are all in the public domain," he said in a post on X.
The former Union environment minister said that the project's various components are: an international container transshipment port; an airport; a power plant; a massive greenfield township and tourism facilities.
"The entire project will destroy at least 33,000 acres of pristine tropical forest. Now comes news that the project is proposed to be expanded to establish - a cruise terminal to facilitate a global port-led city; a ship-building and ship-repair facility; and an export-import port," Ramesh said.
He claimed that an additional 100 acres of biodiversity-rich forests will be destroyed on account of these new proposals.
"This is sheer folly multiplying. The blatant hypocrisy of a Prime Minister who boasts to the world of his deep commitment to environmental causes stands thoroughly exposed.
"There is no great mystery on who will get these port contracts. If the Prime Minister wants to walk his talk, he should immediately order a pause and set up an independent panel to review the project in its entirety," the Congress leader said