Legal challenges to the Great Nicobar infrastructure project

• The Central government’s Rs 72,000 cr-Great Nicobar Island (GNI) infrastructure project will involve the construction of an airport for civilian and defence use, an international container transshipment terminal, and a township.
• However, it has also faced legal challenges in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) and the Calcutta High Court, which has jurisdiction over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• Conclusions of a high-powered committee (HPC) formed by NGT in 2023 to revisit the project’s green clearance were submitted in an affidavit to NGT’s Kolkata bench by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited (ANIIDCO).
• The HPC concluded that the proposed transshipment port does not fall in the Island Coastal Regulation Zone-IA (ICRZ-IA), where ports are prohibited.

What led the NGT to revisit the green clearance?

• In 2022, environmental activist and Mumbai-based non-profit Conservation Action Trust (CAT) challenged the environmental and Coastal Regulation Zone clearances granted to the GNI project.
• Along with the submission before the eastern bench of the NGT, CAT filed a separate appeal challenging the forest clearance.
• The Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MoEFCC) grants these clearances to permit construction activities.
• The appeals before the NGT sought for them to be quashed.
• The grounds for the appeals were similar, centred on irreversible damage that the project would cause to biodiversity, inadequate environmental impact studies and opacity in the clearance process.
• The appeals pointed out that GNI was a Biosphere Reserve, home to a “wide spectrum of ecosystems comprising wet evergreen forests”.
• Issues of inadequate assessment of the impact on Shompen and Nicobarese tribal communities and non-compliance with due process in granting statutory clearances were also flagged.
• The Shompens are hunter-gatherers, while the Nicobarese people’s ancestral lands are likely to be affected by the project.
• Both appeals said the challenge was not against defence projects but over permissions granted for ports and townships in prohibited areas, such as the Island Coastal Regulation Zone (ICRZ) – IA area.
• The categorisation refers to “ecologically sensitive areas and the geomorphological features which play a role in maintaining the integrity of the coast.”
• CAT also alleged a conflict of interest as the Secretary, Environment and Forests, of the UT of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, was also the Managing Director of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation Limited (ANIIDCO).

Orders of NGT

• The special bench ruled it did not find any ground to interfere with the forest clearance.
• While the forest helps tackle air pollution and climate change, development cannot be ignored.
• It added that there was hardly any development in GNI and there was a need not only for “economic development but also national security”.
• The bench said that while the environmental impact assessment procedure is mandatory, it does not follow that “hyper technical approach should be adopted ignoring ground realities about the need of the country for development and national security.”
• However, in its conclusion, it ruled that there were “unanswered deficiencies” on coral conservation, the port’s location in a prohibited area and limited baseline data collection.