The Centre has cleared the decks for the controversial Rs.75,000 crore project to construct a greenfield international port, an international container transhipment terminal, a township and power plants across 16,610 hectares of pristine forests in a Great Nicobar island.
The environment ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee on Infrastructure projects approved the project on the island that is home to the indigenous Shompen tribe, besides rare flora and fauna from the Nicobar megapode, leatherback turtles, the endemic Nicobar Macaque and saltwater crocodiles. 30 of the 51 active nests of the Nicobar megapod – described by the EAC as keystone species of the Nicobar island – will be permanently destroyed, the EAC has recorded in the minutes of its August 22-23 meeting that cleared the project. It will also involve felling of over 8.5 lakh trees, loss of 12-20 hectares of mangrove cover, claiming 298 hectares of sea bed and considerable coral translocation.
The Great Nicobar Island was declared as a biosphere reserve in January 1989 by the Centre and included in the Unesco man and biosphere programme in May 2013. It is considered a global biodiversity hotspot, which explains the strong opposition to the project from several quarters.
EAC has mandated specific ‘conservation and management plans’ and high funding for the endemic species, mangroves and corals and other fauna, besides several other caveats, minutes of the meeting show. EAC said three independent committees will be set up: one to oversee pollution related matters, another on biodiversity and the third to oversee welfare and issues related to Shompen and Nicobarese tribes.
The strategic and economic imperative that the government has pitched for clearing the project, according to a home ministry note on March 30 to the environment ministry, mentioned that the airport proposed at Gandhi Nagar-Shastri Nagar area would be a ‘joint military-civil, dual-use airport, under the operational control of Indian Navy’ and its details should not be made public due its strategic nature.
However, the airport is expected to handle over 4,000 passengers in peak hour, EAC records show. A March 2021 pre-feasibility report submitted to EAC in earlier meetings cited national security and ‘ongoing consolidation of the Indian Ocean region and the military and economic impact of this consideration’.
“The Indian Ocean Region in general and the Indian Ocean in particular has turned into a strategic hotspot in recent years. In response to the increasing strategic value of this IOR, a critical mass of development in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is necessary for strengthening India’s regional presence”, the report said. The Great Nicobar Island also represents a significant economic development opportunity as the main east-west shipping route that links east Asian exports with the Indian Ocean, Suez Canal and Europe runs just to the south of this Island, it said.
“By building a container port in this location, India can participate more fully in the global shipping trade” and generate lakhs of new jobs, the report said. Other countries like Myanmar, China and Sri Lanka were gearing up to develop deep water facilities for taking a major share of trade by developing suitable harbour facilities and it is therefore imperative that India should do the same, the report contended. Great Nicobar Island is considered perfect as a site as it is equidistant from Colombo, Port Klang and Singapore and is also very close to the East-West international shipping corridor. The proposed township and power stations are to complement and supplement the economic activity and tourism development. The jury is out on the future of the Great Nicobar island.
