Strategic imperative and environment concern in Great Nicobar project

• Opposition has described the proposed Rs 72,000-crore infra upgrade at the Great Nicobar Island as a “grave threat” to the island’s indigenous inhabitants and fragile ecosystem, and demanded a “thorough, impartial review of the proposed project, including by the Parliamentary committees concerned”.

Great Nicobar

• Great Nicobar is the southernmost and largest of the Nicobar Islands, a sparsely inhabited 910-sq-km patch of mainly tropical rainforest in southeastern Bay of Bengal.
• Indira Point on the island, India’s southernmost point, is only 90 nautical miles (less than 170 km) from Sumatra, the largest island of the Indonesian archipelago
• Great Nicobar has two national parks, a biosphere reserve, small populations of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribal peoples, and a few thousand non-tribal settlers.
• The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a cluster of 836 islands, split into two groups — the Andaman Islands to the north and the Nicobar Islands to the south — by the 150-km wide Ten Degree Channel.

The infra project

• The mega infrastructure project— is proposed to include an International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT), a greenfield international airport with a peak hour capacity to handle 4,000 passengers, a township, and a gas and solar based power plant spread across 16,610 hectares.
• The project for the “holistic development” of Great Nicobar Island was implemented after a report by NITI Aayog.
• It is close to the Malacca Strait, the main waterway that connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, and the container terminal is expected to “allow Great Nicobar to participate in the regional and global maritime economy by becoming a major player in cargo transshipment’’.
• A proposed “greenfield city” will tap into both the maritime and tourism potential of the island.
• The site for the proposed ICTT and power plant is Galathea Bay on the southeastern corner of Great Nicobar Island, where there is no human habitation.

Strategic importance

• The Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean region are of vital strategic and security interest to India as the Chinese Navy seeks to expand its footprint across the region.
• India is wary of a build-up of Chinese maritime forces at the Indo-Pacific choke points of especially Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok.
• China’s attempts to expand its footprint in the region includes building a military facility at Coco Islands (Myanmar) lying just 55 km to the north of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
• surveillance of the entire area, and the building up of a strong military deterrence at Great Nicobar is of vital importance to India’s national security.

Environmental concerns

• The proposed infra upgrade has been opposed on grounds of the threat it poses to the ecology of the islands.
• Also, potential impact on the Shompen, a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) of hunter-gatherers with an estimated population of a few hundred individuals who live in a tribal reserve on the island.
• It is feared that the port project will destroy coral reefs with spinoff effects on the local marine ecosystem, and pose a threat to the terrestrial Nicobar Megapode bird and leatherback turtles who nest in the Galathea Bay area.
• In April 2023, the Kolkata Bench of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) declined to interfere with the environmental and forest clearance granted to the project.
• The Tribunal, however, ordered that a high-power committee should be constituted to look into the clearances.
• There is no clarity yet on whether the committee, consisting mainly of government representatives, has submitted its report.