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More than 70 scholars, erstwhile bureaucrats, activists, lawyers, and environmentalists connected Monday (October 27, 2025) wrote an unfastened missive responding to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav’s defence of the projected ₹92,000-crore Great Nicobar Island mega-infrastructure project, urging the Minister to “set speech governmental considerations” and absorption connected the project’s “grave and irreversible antagonistic implications”.
The letter, made nationalist connected Monday and sent to Mr. Yadav’s bureau arsenic well, was successful effect to the Environment Minister’s nonfiction successful The Hindu past month, successful which helium defended the task that involves the operation of a trans-shipment port, an planetary airport, a township, and a powerfulness works connected much than 160 sq. km of land.
This includes astir 130 sq. km of pristine wood inhabited by the Nicobarese, a Scheduled Tribe (ST), and the Shompens, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) whose colonisation is estimated to beryllium betwixt 200 and 300.
The Environment Minister’s portion had travel days aft elder Congress person Sonia Gandhi had written a portion criticising the mode clearances for the task had been obtained and cautioning the authorities connected its imaginable interaction connected the islands’ biodiversity and indigenous populations.
Responding to Mr. Yadav’s piece, the unfastened missive argued that it was “disingenuous” to “invoke nationalist security” and statement the task arsenic a “strategic one” whenever questions are raised astir it. The signatories said that Mr. Yadav’s fig of conscionable 1.82% of the islands’ forests being utilized for the task was “mathematically close but ecologically misleading”, arguing that this fig was calculated keeping successful caput the wood areas nether each of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands archipelago, erstwhile successful fact, the task country would instrumentality astir 15% of the Nicobar Islands archipelago, which is antithetic from the forests successful the Andamans Islands.
“The lone constituent of the projected task that was made defence-related, and that excessively aft the nationalist hearing, is the dual-use military-cum-civilian airport,” the missive said, adding that, “The greenfield township, a commercialized project, covers much than 80% of the full task area, excluding the defence township of 12.6 sq kilometres.”
The signatories see historiographer Ramachandra Guha, wildlife conservationist Romulus Whitaker, wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, quality conservationist Asad Rahmani, idiosyncratic Sharachchandra Lele, and erstwhile Gujarat Principal Chief Conservator of Forests Ashok Kumar Sharma, among others.
The experts went connected to refute the Minister’s assertion that laws and procedures meant to support the rights of Scheduled Tribes had been respected and followed, saying this was “far from true”. “The rights accorded to the indigenous communities nether the Forest Rights Act person been violated. Even the provisions nether the ANPAT Regulation (1956) and the Shompen Policy (2015) person been wholly ignored successful the unreserved to assistance clearances.”
The signatories alleged that the Environmental Appraisal Committee ignored anthropological and ecological objections and that “Galathea wildlife sanctuary was denotified, and 3 caller sanctuaries were notified without immoderate consultation with the Great and Little Nicobar islanders”.
The Calcutta High Court is presently proceeding a batch of petitions that person challenged the wood clearances obtained for the project, and the National Green Tribunal is proceeding a substance that deals with the biology clearances accorded to it.
Moreover, the forests of Great Nicobar are “our country’s past remaining old-growth forest” and “the lone location to astir 24 per cent of each taxon recovered there”, the missive said, further raising questions astir its imaginable economical viability, which was yet to beryllium demonstrated.
