NEW DELHI: The Congress slammed the Centre on Friday over a media report claiming that official maps of Great Nicobar Island were altered to remove corals. The party said this was not an ecological update but a “bureaucratic rewrite” designed to bypass environmental safeguards.
The opposition party alleged that when reality stands in the way of corporate ambition, the Narendra Modi government simply redraws it. Congress general secretary in charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, shared on X a media report claiming that between 2020 and 2021, corals vanished from the maps of the Great Nicobar island’s coastline, while vital green zones were dramatically reduced in size.
“Another day, another revelation of how the Modi government has bulldozed the Great Nicobar Mega Infra Project through due process. Now we learn that official maps of the island have been airbrushed to remove corals from the map,” said Ramesh.
According to the report he shared, in the 2020 map, the southern and western coasts of the island, including Galathea Bay—where a proposed international container transshipment terminal is planned—were marked as having extensive coral reefs.
“By 2021, the revised government map moved these reefs mid-sea, where it is biologically impossible for coral reefs to exist. But the shift in the reef’s location on the map conveniently paved the way for the mega-project,” Ramesh claimed.
In 2020, nearly the entire island was marked as CRZ-IA, meaning construction of ports was entirely prohibited. By 2021, Galathea Bay was no longer classified under CRZ-IA, effectively allowing development. This “re-categorisation” enables the development of the project area, he added.
“This is not an ecological update, but a bureaucratic rewrite to bypass environmental safeguards. When reality stands in the way of corporate ambition, the Modi government simply redraws it,” Ramesh said.
In an article in an English daily, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi had termed the Rs 72,000 crore Great Nicobar Mega Infra Project a “planned misadventure” that threatens the survival of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes, destroys one of the world’s most unique ecosystems.
2021 map no longer shows Galathea Bay
Jairam Ramesh, shared a media report on X and said that in 2020, the maps showed nearly the entire island as CRZ-IA, adding that this means that the construction of ports is entirely prohibited there. The 2021 map “magically” no longer shows Galathea Bay as falling under CRZ-IA, the Congress leader said.
