Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, flagging concerns over the lack of transparency in the Great Nicobar Island project.
He asserted that the environmental impact assessments of different aspects of the venture are "demonstrably inadequate."
Ramesh’s latest letter comes against the backdrop of a series of exchanges with Yadav over the Great Nicobar Island project in the past few years.
"I am sorry to say yet again that the environmental impact assessments of different aspects of the Great Nicobar Island Project are demonstrably inadequate and fall woefully short of guidelines set by the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change itself," the former environment minister said in his letter to Yadav.
Ramesh pointed out that these had been detailed in his earlier letters to which Yadav had "no worthwhile answer".
"Your position is that conditions made part of the environmental clearance mandate continuous monitoring. In this connection, may I submit the following for your consideration. Six-monthly compliance reports are to be made public. But after March 2024 no such compliance report has been made available. Minutes of the project monitoring committee meetings are being uploaded several months after they have been held," Ramesh said.
Ramesh said the environmental clearance for the project, granted on November 11, 2022, required several conservation and mitigation plans to be submitted within 15 days. However, these plans have not been made public
The plans were to be prepared by institutions including the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) and the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department (ANFD), he said.
According to Ramesh, some of these institutions were later asked to revise their monitoring and mitigation proposals after incorporating suggestions from the Expert Appraisal Committee. "These plans too are not publicly available," he said.
Ramesh further argued that it was "strange, to say the least" that some of these plans may have been submitted only after being appraised by the committee concerned, raising questions about their adequacy and reliability.
He also pointed out that the updated Environment Management Plan, which was to be based on existing and additional studies, remains unavailable in the public domain.
"There are at least, as far as I have been able to make out, 12 such studies by different institutions. Several studies are still pending, which proves that the environmental clearance was granted prematurely and hastily. Some mitigation measures, such as the large-scale relocation of coral colonies, are clearly unrealistic and almost impossible to implement," Ramesh said.
The Congress leader noted that he had earlier sought the public release of the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted by the National Green Tribunal, along with the field survey conducted by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management, on which the committee's conclusions regarding the Coastal Regulation Zone status of the proposed transshipment port were based.
"Everything I am asking to be made public in no way hampers the fulfilment of the so-called strategic objectives that are now being cited as the rationale for the Great Nicobar Island Project. Serious questions over its environmental impact assessment and legitimate concerns about its grave ecological consequences remain unanswered and unaddressed by your sadly evasive replies," Ramesh said.
"I am simply unable to understand the extraordinary level of non-transparency being adopted to conceal reports, studies and plans," he added.
The Congress on Wednesday criticised the project, describing the proposed transshipment port at Galathea Bay as a recipe for ecological disaster that would result in the large-scale destruction of coral colonies.
Ramesh has also written to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, urging him to reconsider the decision to reject the full expansion of the INS Baaz runway. In his correspondence with Yadav, he has repeatedly highlighted what he described as the "demonstrably dubious" nature of the project's environmental impact assessment.
The Centre plans to develop an international container transshipment port, a civilian-cum-naval airport, a township and a power plant under the Great Nicobar Island project.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has alleged that the government's claim that the project is primarily about national defence and a transshipment port is a "lie", arguing instead that it is intended to benefit a single businessman through the development of hotels and casinos on ecologically sensitive land.
Earlier this month, Rahul released a video of over 16 minutes based on his visit to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in late April and urged people to sign a petition calling on the government to "choose green over greed".
(With inputs from PTI)
