6 months ago
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In an important submission made earlier the National Green Tribunal (NGT) connected October 30, 2025, the Union Environment Ministry admitted that the Great Nicobar mega infrastructure task volition person a important interaction connected this biodiversity and forest-rich land located astatine the utmost southbound of the Andaman and Nicobar concatenation (The Hindu, “Fully alert of Great Nicobar project’s impact, says Centre”, October 31, 2025).
The task that envisages an concern of ₹92,000 crore (₹72,000 crore successful 2021) includes a transshipment port, an airport, a powerfulness works and a greenfield tourism task and township. It has seen aggravated scrutiny and challenges earlier some the NGT and the Calcutta High Court.
Defending the biology clearance granted to the task successful November 2022, Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, admitted earlier the NGT, successful the latest proceeding connected October 30, that Galathea Bay, the tract of the larboard and besides the centre-piece of the project, had implicit 20,000 unrecorded coral colonies, implicit 50 nesting mounds of the endemic Nicobar Megapode (also a Schedule 1 taxon arsenic per the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972) and besides an progressive nesting tract of the Giant Leatherback turtle. Ms. Bhati noted that the Ministry was afloat alert of the interaction of the task and of its work to undertake mitigation measures, fixed that it had prescribed conservation measures till 2052.
A digit points to the Environment Ministry
The cardinal questions that originate and which the Ministry would alternatively side-step is the request successful the archetypal spot for the conservation and mitigation measures. Presenting the task arsenic fait accompli and mitigation measures arsenic a solution conceals, first, the Ministry’s ain complicity successful allowing the task and second, the nonaccomplishment of its superior mandate of conservation and protection.
There are astatine slightest 2 important caller developments that underline this cardinal contradiction. First successful 2021, the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) denotified the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary that had been projected successful 1997 precisely for the extortion of leatherback turtles, coral colonies, nesting populations of the megapode and important elements of biodiversity specified arsenic mangroves and brackish h2o crocodiles. It tin lone beryllium considered ingenious for the instauration that created the wildlife sanctuary and has the statutory work for its extortion to archetypal region this protection, and past accidental that conservation and mitigation plans are being enactment successful place.
Coastal regularisation applies
The 2nd contented is simply a class of onshore labelled by Indian instrumentality arsenic coastal regularisation portion (CRZ)-1A. Coastal areas which person mangroves, corals, turtle nesting beaches, oversea writer beds and nesting grounds of birds and/or which are notified arsenic protected areas (wildlife sanctuary and nationalist park) are each included successful CRZ-1A. These are areas with maximum extortion and are, by implication, retired of bounds for ample operation projects specified arsenic the larboard successful Great Nicobar. Galathea Bay qualifies arsenic CRZ 1A connected each counts. This is wherever the Environment Ministry has tied itself up successful aggregate knots of its ain making.
This became explicit and inescapable erstwhile an NGT bid of April 2023 noted that the larboard tract had 20,668 coral colonies and “that portion of the task is successful CRZ-IA country wherever Port is prohibited”. The NGT past appointed a high-powered committee to look into the matter, which successful crook asked the Chennai-based National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM), Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, to behaviour a crushed truthing survey.
Based connected the survey, the layout provided by the task proponent, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO), and the clarification received from the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department, the NCSCM concluded that nary portion of the task country fell nether CRZ-1A. A confidential study that the NCSCM past submitted to the high-powered committee became the ground for its assertion that the larboard tract was not CRZ-1A. ANIIDCO’s affidavit successful the NGT successful September 2024 makes this explicit: “The HPC came to the decision that successful the Report submitted by the NCSCM, it has been determined that operation of [a] larboard is permissible successful CRZ-IB country but not permissible successful CRZ-IA. The NCSCM, hence, concluded that nary portion of the task country is falling nether CRZ-1A.”
Not lone is the logic absurdly circular, but it is besides important to enactment that neither the NCSCM’s study nor the high-powered committee’s submission to the NGT are successful the nationalist domain. The Ministry has repeatedly refused to merchandise these, arguing that parts of the task are defence related adjacent though denotification of the sanctuary and the downgrading to CRZ 1B were done wholly for commercialized projects.
Galathea Bay is ecologically important
Importantly, Ms. Bhati’s astir caller submission, that Galathea Bay has corals, megapode nests and the formation is utilized for nesting by leatherback turtles and successful information that the Ministry was good alert of this reality, confirms the continued value of this location. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Forest Department’s ain information shows successful information that the formation astatine Galathea Bay saw implicit 600 leatherback nestings successful the nesting play of 2024 — 1 of the highest ever recorded successful Great Nicobar.
This being the case, it is not imaginable that Ms. Bhati and the high-powered committee/NCSCM study are some telling the truth. If Ms. Bhati’s submission and admissions earlier the NGT are so correct, Galathea Bay is inactive precise overmuch CRZ-1A and deserves the highest protection. This raises a superior question astir the reports submitted earlier the NGT that reason otherwise. It is past not conscionable a substance of the Ministry tying itself up successful knots (which it surely has). It besides raises cardinal issues of technological rigour and procedural propriety and honesty.
Pankaj Sekhsaria is writer and exertion of 7 books connected the Andaman and Nicobar Islands including, astir recently, “The Great Nicobar Betrayal (The Hindu Group, 2024) and ‘Island connected Edge – The Great Nicobar Crisis’ (2025). The views expressed are personal
