On February 16, a bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT), headed by Chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, disposed of a clutch of applications challenging the environmental clearance (EC) for the Rs.92,000-crore Great Nicobar Island mega-infrastructure project. The bench found no “good ground to interfere”, citing the project’s “strategic importance”, and directed authorities to ensure “full and strict compliance” of EC conditions.

The EC had been granted in 2022. An earlier NGT bench, acting on a challenge, had in 2023 called for the formation of a High-Powered Committee (HPC) to examine three specific concerns: the protection of coral reef colonies, nesting sites of leatherback turtles, and the allegation that parts of the project fall within ecologically protected zones.

Applicants in the current case argued that the terms of reference for the HPC were “truncated and factually incorrect”, that the three issues had not been properly examined, and that the HPC’s report should be made public. The NGT rejected these arguments, ruling that the remaining issues had “been dealt with” by the HPC, and that it found no error in the drafting of the terms of reference.

The Union government had opposed disclosure of the HPC report on grounds that the project is “of strategic, defence and national importance and has confidential and privileged information”. Relying on this position, the NGT noted that the project is “very important for India from the strategic point of view”.

The Nicobarese and the Shompen, both Scheduled Tribes, have alleged that their rights on forest lands earmarked for the project have not been settled, and have accused the Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration of pressuring them to surrender their ancestral lands.

Frontline spoke to environmental researchers, lawyers, and former government officials who have followed the case closely.

‘The overseeing committee is made up of project proponents’

Manish Chandi, a researcher in social ecology who has worked on and visited Great Nicobar Island for more than 20.years, and mapped a few Shompen settlements there for the Shompen Policy says the NGT order was not a surprise, but that it has taken a long while for them to say what they did. Its obvious there is pressure on all government entities to tow the project towards implementation.

His central concern is the absence of any independent consultants and that they have not given heed to the large amount of information in the public domain on the exact reasons for concerns. The monitoring committee, he points out, comprises entities that are themselves beneficiaries of the project—the Integrated Development Corporation, the Forest Department, the Wildlife Institute of India, and the Zoological Survey of India. All, he says, have received financial assistance through the project, and will in future for the various assessments and studies.

On the government’s claim that no tribal communities will be displaced, Chandi is direct: “I have mapped a lot of the locations on the island. At least three settlements of Shompen are going to be displaced for the project. If you take the waypoints of the latitude and longitude of the proposed area, you can see it. You can see it on Google Earth. They will be displaced.. there’s no doubt about it. I have the locations of the 3 settlements in the proposed region.”

He recalls the historical context that makes this particularly pointed. In 1960, the Nicobarese and Shompen, at the request of B.S. Chengappa, the first Indian forest officer posted to help establish a mainland indian presence in the islands as a settlement at Campbell Bay —was unable to so anything on his own. It was the Nicobarese people and their chieftains who helped him including persuading the Shompen to move further into the interior, without conflict, for the settlement to occupy present day Campbell Bay. “The tables have turned,” Chandi says. “Mainland Indians are now in the majority. The islanders—the Shompen and the Nicobarese—are in a minority. And we are deciding whether they can stay on the island in their original habitations or not.”

He also questions the project’s economic rationale, noting that no credible evidence has been placed in the public domain on what financial benefit will accrue either to the Indian government or to local communities. “There is insufficient water in the projections and propositions, very few facilities, and the entire process has been shrouded in obscure claims” he says. “It is being done in the name of national security, but t even the former naval chief, Admiral Arun Prakash, and Abhijit Singh of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative have assessed the situation and said it doesn’t make sense.”

Chandi points to a pattern he finds telling: the government, he says, has modified maps in which coral reefs have, per recent news reports, disappeared from the coast and reappeared in the middle of the ocean. “What does that tell you? They are extremely intent on going ahead because there are significant short term gains and motives behind it, regarding commerce, rather than actual national security.”

‘The order reads as a justification for government action’

Debi Goenka, a Bombay-based environmentalist who has worked on environmental law and governance, is less measured: “It’s a shocking order. They have not really dealt with any of the issues raised in the application. The way it is drafted, it becomes a justification for government actions—and the government is the project proponent.”

Goenka traces the current situation to a shift he says began after 2014, when, in his account, instructions were conveyed to the Chairmen and Member Secretaries of Environment Advisory Committees to clear projects. “His successor has boasted several times about how he modified the system to ensure that environmental clearances are granted faster,” he says, without naming the Minister. “And from time to time, the Environment Ministry itself has issued notifications saying that the clearance has to be given within X number of days—not that a decision has to be taken, but that a clearance has to be given.”

He questions how compliance with EC conditions can realistically be monitored by anyone outside the official system: “I can’t do it sitting in Bombay. I will not even be allowed to visit the site because there will be travel restrictions.” He also notes that not a single project in India has achieved 100 per cent compliance with all its EC conditions—a fact, he says, that everyone at the NGT and in the Ministry of Environment knows. “These are things that sound good on paper if you don’t know how the system works.”

His deeper concern is that the pattern of clearances reflects a broader refusal to reckon with what is already happening to the country’s water, forests, and climate. “I don’t think they are fools. I think Bhupendra Yadav is actually a very intelligent man. But despite that, if he is allowing these things to go, who is going to save the country from floods and droughts and extreme heat events? They are going ahead with a business-as-usual model. Climate change does not exist. You can keep growing infinitely and not worry about the consequences.”

‘National security cannot exempt a project from environmental law’

Ritwick Dutta, an environmental lawyer who has represented petitioners in several forest and environment cases, focusses on what he calls a legal error at the heart of the NGT order.

“The reasoning relies on strategic and national interest,” he says. “This is not part of the law at all. It is not part of the EIA notification that a different process has to be adopted simply because something is in national or security interest. Even issues concerning national security must still comply with environmental requirements.”

The consequences of accepting this logic, he argues, would be severe: “If strategic and national interest become the basis for environmental decisions, then almost 90 per cent of projects could be categorised as economically or security-wise strategic. Environmental law is effectively placed much lower in the hierarchy, because scrutiny can then be avoided by citing security concerns.”

On the quality of the NGT’s reasoning, Dutta says the order’s scope is too narrow. The bench, he says, focussed on comparing the petitioner’s position with the Ministry of Environment’s position, and concluded it was satisfied with the EC conditions. “What is before the NGT is the process that led to the decision and the underlying studies. An independent application of mind to the issues raised was required, rather than relying largely on the responses of the respondents.”

‘Three and a half years, and the tribal complaint is still pending’

E.A.S. Sarma, a former Secretary to the government of India who has worked on tribal welfare, raises a constitutional argument that, he says, the NGT did not address at all.

Under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Presidential Regulation, he explains, no other legislation applies to the islands unless a specific regulation explicitly overrides the relevant provision. Since the project intrudes into the Tribal Reserve notified under this Presidential Regulation, he argues that the NGT’s order—which deals only with the Forest Conservation Act and environmental clearances—may not be applicable: “Someone could challenge it before the Supreme Court and argue that the NGT order is not applicable in this case.”

Sarma had filed a complaint with the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, a constitutional authority, and written to the President of India twice on the tribal dimensions of the project. The President’s office forwarded his letter to the commission, which asked the Andaman administration to respond. The administration’s reply, he says, was “wishy-washy”. He submitted a point-wise legal rebuttal. Then the then-Chairman of the commission, who had taken interest in the matter, resigned. “For the last three and a half years, the case has remained pending.”

On the forest diversion itself, Sarma points to the Godavarman judgment, in which the Supreme Court held that forest land should not ordinarily be diverted for non-forest purposes, and that any exception requires compensatory afforestation at two acres for every one acre diverted. The Forest Advisory Council, he says, approved the diversion of approximately three to four per cent of the Nicobar Islands’ forest cover—tropical forest—on the condition that compensatory afforestation would be carried out in Haryana. “But Haryana is already destroying its existing Aravalli forests. The State government has modified local laws, and the Supreme Court has recently taken note of that. In any case, you can never replace tropical forest in Haryana. That itself appears invalid on the face of it.”

The Shompen, he notes, number around 250 to 260 people. Their Tribal Advisory Council objected to the project. The community itself has not been directly consulted. “They are the original residents of the Nicobar Islands. Their habitat should not be disturbed. Yet the government is doing precisely that.”

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