New Delhi: First Sonia Gandhi, then Rahul Gandhi and this time Congress leader Jairam Ramesh have written to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav over the Great Nicobar Project, claiming that the Great Nicobar Island Development Project will “destroy” the unique ecosystem there, and urged him to pause, reconsider and rethink the project’s current design and details.
In his letter to Yadav, Ramesh said the studies based on which the environmental clearance for the project was granted were “completely inadequate” and “the environmental impact assessment process has been made a mockery of.”
Ramesh stressed that security experts have written that the country’s essential security needs can be met without causing such “ecological devastation.”
In his letter to Yadav, the former environment minister said, “I want to reiterate that Great Nicobar Island’s biodiversity is unique worldwide, and new discoveries are being made from time to time. This is a unique ecosystem that will be destroyed by the Great Nicobar Island Development Project.” Ramesh said that the talk of planting trees as compensation is complete nonsense, and the minister knows this.
The Congress general secretary in charge of communications said, “Security experts themselves have written that the country’s vital security needs can be met without causing such ecological devastation. I once again urge you to pause, think, and re-examine the project in its current design and details.”
Ramesh said it is clear that the studies based on which the project has been granted environmental clearance are not even Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and are based on baseline data collection over a period of days and weeks at the most, and very little else.
He said, “These reports are an insult to science and a mockery of the EIA process. All my attempts to find the ‘comprehensive studies, detailed assessments, and robust environmental impact assessments and environmental management plans’ relied upon in the FAQs have been futile.”
“The government published the ‘Great Nicobar Project: FAQs’ on May 1, 2026, which stated that ‘the potential ecological impacts of the project have been fully identified, assessed, and are being effectively managed through a robust Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process and a detailed Environmental Management Plan (EMP).’
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