Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said on Wednesday that he was glad Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav admitted that the environmental clearance for the Great Nicobar Island (GNI) Project was not based on comprehensive environment impact assessment (EIA) studies of three seasons’ primary data but on a single seasonal cycle integrated with historical datasets and reiterated his appeal to conduct detailed impact assessment surveys.
“Is it not prudent to conduct comprehensive EIA studies over three seasons to account for seasonal variations?” Ramesh asked. He also pointed out that faced with “incontrovertible evidence of its hugely adverse ecological impacts”, the Union government is now emphasising the GNI project’s “supposed strategic rationale”.
The MP’s assertions were made in his June 3 letter to Yadav, in response to the minister’s May 27 letter. Ramesh said that “secondary data is just not a substitute for primary data collection and project-specific studies”.
In a letter to Yadav on May 10, Ramesh had flagged “inadequate EIA studies” and had alleged that they fell short of legal requirements as they were based on baseline data collected during a single seasonal cycle.
Yadav, though, had rejected this charge and said in his May 27 response that “while primary field data were collected over a single seasonal cycle, the analysis was integrated with long-term historical datasets maintained by reputed institutions”, which possessed decades of ecological research experience in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Yadav had also stated that concerns raised on environmental impact assessment and biodiversity impacts have “already been examined in detail during the statutory appraisal and subsequent judicially mandated review process”.
The GNI project will span 166 sq km and include a transhipment container port, an international military-civilian use airport, power infrastructure, and a greenfield coastal city. It will require the felling of 13,000 hectares of pristine forest on the ecologically sensitive islands.
Ramesh contested the minister’s reliance on two National Green Tribunal (NGT) judgments— dated April 3, 2023 and February 16, 2026—as validation of the clearance process. He pointed out that the February 16 ruling had noted the ministry’s submissions on the erosion status of Galathea Bay and flagged that ports are prohibited in “high erosion stretches.”
Ramesh also renewed his demand that the report of a high-powered committee on revisiting environmental clearance to the GNI project, submitted in a sealed cover, be made public, questioning why the re-examination of an environmental clearance would be treated as confidential.
