Over 70 scientists, environmentalists and former bureaucrats on Monday urged the government to reconsider the ₹92,000-crore Great Nicobar Island project, calling it “an exploitative commercial proposal” being “wrongly portrayed as a strategic defence project” even as Union home minister Amit Shah claimed the project will increase the country’s maritime trade multiple times.
Speaking at the inauguration of the India Maritime Week 2025 in Mumbai, Shah said India has democratic stability and naval capabilities, and has bridged the gap between the Indo-Pacific and the global South. “The $5 billion Great Nicobar project will increase the maritime world trade many times,” Shah said.
The mega infrastructure project, titled Holistic Development of Great Nicobar, involves the construction of a transhipment port, an international airport, a township and a power plant over more than 160 square km of land.
This includes around 130 square km of pristine forest inhabited by the Nicobarese, a Scheduled Tribe (ST), and the Shompens, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), whose population is estimated to be between 200 and 300.
In a detailed letter to environment minister Bhupender Yadav, the signatories said it was “disingenuous to label what is essentially a commercial project as a strategic one and invoke national security whenever questions on the project are raised”.
Yadav has defended the decision in a newspaper article, saying it has been taken after due consideration of its ecological, social and strategic aspects.
They cautioned that the massive diversion of forest land and displacement of indigenous communities due to the project would cause “grave and irreversible” ecological and social damage.
“The only component of the proposed project that was made defence-related, and that too after the public hearing, is the dual-use military-cum-civilian airport,” the letter said.
The signatories to the letter said the planned township alone would house 3.5 lakh people, over 40 times the island’s current population of about 8,000, and occupy more than 80 per cent of the project area.
“This will likely become a liability rather than an asset for the nation,” they warned.
The letter also pointed out that the members of the Nicobarese Tribal Council have stated that their lands were given for the projects without their consent.
The forests of Great Nicobar are “our country’s last remaining old-growth forest” and “the only home to approximately 24 per cent of all species found there”, the letter said.
Raising questions about the project’s economic rationale, the signatories to the letter alleged that its viability had not been demonstrated.
The signatories include Ramachandra Guha, Romulus Whitaker, wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, nature conservationist Asad Rahmani, scientist Sharachchandra Lele, former Gujarat PCCF Ashok Kumar Sharma and Manish Chandi, former member of the research advisory board of Andaman Nicobar Tribal Training and Research Institute.