The Congress on Saturday criticised the Union government for not including an independent member in the high-powered committee to review the Great Nicobar Island Development Project. The Opposition party also alleged that the committee had not carried out any “meaningful and comprehensive” reassessment of the project.

The Great Nicobar project involves the construction of a Rs 35,000-crore trans-shipment port, an international airport, a power plant, a township and tourism infrastructure spread over more than 160 square kilometers of land.

In 2023, the National Green Tribunal constituted a high-powered committee to revisit the environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to the project.

On Saturday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, in a letter to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, said he was “shocked” that the committee did not have any independent institution or expert.

He pointed out that it comprised of the “NITI Aayog that conceived the project, the project proponent Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation, a representative of the Ministry of Environment’s Expert Appraisal Committee that recommended the clearances in the first place and Ministry of Environment that granted the clearances”.

“Need I say anything more on the credibility and integrity of the high-powered committee?” asked Ramesh.

The former environment minister alleged that the committee, “biased by its composition, has not carried out any meaningful and comprehensive reassessment as it had been directed to do”.

Ramesh also asked why the report submitted by the committee had not been made public. “How can a review, howsoever flawed, and that too mandated by the court, be classified thus?”

He also said that the National Green Tribunal, in its April 2023, order, said that over seven square kilometres of the total project area was an ecologically sensitive zone where no development is allowed.

In a recent submission before the tribunal, however, the Ministry of Environment claimed that no part of the project fell in the Island Coastal Regulation Zone-1A areas, which are ecologically sensitive zones lying between the low-tide and high-tide lines. The Island Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 2019 bars the development of such areas.

Ramesh asked: “What is the basis of the dramatic U-turn and what confidence can be placed in the new set of facts being presented?”

“It is also a matter of grave concern that while the NGT [National Green Trbunal] deliberates on petitions before it, ANIIDCO [Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation] has already invited expressions of interest for clearing 65 square km of biodiversity-rich forests,” he said. “I believe the government of India is hell-bent on inflicting an ecological and humanitarian disaster on our country.”

In July, The Indian Express reported that the high-powered committee had concluded the proposed trans-shipment port does not fall in the Island Coastal Regulation Zone-1A.

However, during the clearance process of the project, the Andaman & Nicobar Coastal Management Authority stated that parts of the port, airport and township planned under the project are spread over seven square kilometres falling under the Island Coastal Regulation Zone-1A, according to the newspaper.

Also read: How the loss of a tropical forest in Nicobar could end up funding a jungle safari in Haryana