The Congress on Sunday countered the BJP's broadside at Rahul Gandhi for opposing the Great Nicobar Project, in alleged alignment with China's interests, by reiterating the objections that the Grand Old Party had raised in 2024.

Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh issued a rebuttal to the Centre's statement last week that the "project seeks to balance port-led growth with calibrated environmental safeguards and protection of indigenous communities".

Ramesh said: "The government's claim that only 1.82% of the total land of the island group is being used for the project is irrelevant and misleading. It ignores the ecological and biological richness of the Great Nicobar ecosystem, which is unique both in the island group and in the world....

"Galathea Bay, the site of the port, is unequivocally a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), a site where port construction is not allowed. As per records of the Zoological Survey of India, Galathea Bay is home to more than 20,000 coral colonies, a key marker of a CRZ-1a categorisation. Similarly, the beach here is the most important nesting site of the Giant Leatherback Turtle in the Northern Indian Ocean."

He said the proposal for compensatory afforestation in Haryana was a travesty of ecological principles and illogical.

"The Nicobarese tribal community has expressed concerns multiple times about the project and its impact on their forests, rights, and way of life. In November 2022, they withdrew the NoC they had granted for forest diversion, saying that they were rushed to sign by concealing the extent of tribal areas to be affected by the project. Representatives of the Nicobarese community also stated in a recent press conference that they were being forced to voluntarily surrender their land for the project," Ramesh said.

He questioned how the consent of an uncontacted tribal group was obtained.

"The claims stand even more exposed in the matter of the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), that lives a life of hunting and gathering in the deep forests of Great Nicobar. The Shompen are a primarily uncontacted community and there are no non-Shompen speakers of their language. It is not clear then how the project authorities have taken their informed consent, which is both ethically appropriate and legally mandated," Ramesh said.

He referred to former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Arun Prakash's argument in the June 26, 2024, edition of The Indian Express that “the security capabilities of ANC (Andaman & Nicobar Command) need to be addressed separately and must have no linkage with the developments contemplated for GNI (Great Nicobar Island)".