Nothing more than a ‘damage-control exercise’ triggered by Rahul Gandhi’s high-profile visit to Great Nicobar Island on April 28, says senior party leader Jairam Ramesh
NEW DELHI — Escalating its offensive against the Centre, the Congress on Sunday accused the Narendra Modi government of “bulldozing” one of India’s most ecologically sensitive regions in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to benefit select corporate interests, calling the Great Nicobar Island Development Project a “textbook case of crony capitalism.”
In a strongly worded statement, senior Congress leader and a member of the Rajya Sabha Jairam Ramesh, said the government’s recent clarification on the project was nothing more than a “damage-control exercise” triggered by Rahul Gandhi’s high-profile visit to Great Nicobar Island on April 28.
In a detailed statement issued days after Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Great Nicobar, Ramesh alleged that the Centre’s recent clarification on the project fails to address “substantive objections” raised by local communities, environmental experts, and civil society groups.
“The Modi government is not answering questions—it is evading them while pushing ahead with a project that sacrifices ecology, tribal rights, and transparency at the altar of corporate profiteering,” Ramesh said, in a direct attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governance model.
While the government has pushed the project as a strategic and economic necessity, the Congress alleged that it effectively amounts to handing over pristine island territory to “favoured business conglomerates,” widely seen as a veiled reference to the Adani Group.
Jairam Ramesh argued that the project reflects a broader pattern under the Modi regime where “public resources are systematically transferred to a handful of politically connected corporates.”
The Congress leader warned that the project threatens irreversible ecological damage to one of the world’s last remaining biodiversity hotspots. He described Great Nicobar as a “living laboratory of evolution,” where dozens of new species have been discovered in recent years.
At the centre of the controversy is Galathea Bay, a fragile coastal ecosystem and key nesting site for the endangered Giant Leatherback turtle. Ramesh accused the government of “rewriting environmental rules” to enable the construction of a massive transshipment port in the area.
“This is not development—it is ecological vandalism dressed up as nation-building,” he said.
The Congress also launched a scathing critique of what it described as the systematic weakening of regulatory institutions. Ramesh alleged that scientific bodies such as the Wildlife Institute of India and the Zoological Survey of India were pressured into facilitating clearances, only to later be rewarded with consultancy roles.
He further claimed that independent institutions critical of the project were sidelined or blacklisted, while oversight mechanisms, including committees linked to the National Green Tribunal, were “stacked with individuals aligned to the project.”
“This is not governance—it is institutional capture,” the statement said.
Tribal Communities ‘Pushed Aside’
Ramesh accused the government of trampling upon the rights of indigenous communities, including the Nicobarese and the Shompen tribe.
He alleged that consent from local communities was either “manufactured or coerced,” pointing out that the Nicobarese had withdrawn their earlier approval, claiming they were misled about the scale of the project.
Particularly alarming, he said, was the claim that consent had been obtained from the Shompen—an isolated and largely uncontacted tribal group. “How does a government claim ‘informed consent’ from a community it barely has contact with?” he asked.
‘Wildly Unrealistic’
The Congress also dismissed the project’s economic projections as “wildly unrealistic,” highlighting that the proposed airport’s capacity far exceeds current demand in the region.
Ramesh noted that even government committees have flagged serious concerns about the viability of the transshipment port, which would have to compete with established global hubs without adequate infrastructure support.
“This is not economic planning—it is a high-risk gamble with public money,” he said.
A key plank of the Congress attack was the alleged lack of transparency. Ramesh said crucial documents related to environmental impact, coastal regulation changes, and forest clearances have been kept out of the public domain.
He accused the government of hiding behind “national security” to suppress scrutiny, citing remarks by former Navy chief Arun Prakash that strategic defence concerns should not be conflated with commercial infrastructure projects.
The Modi government has defended the Great Nicobar project as a strategic and economic imperative aimed at boosting India’s maritime capabilities and regional connectivity.
However, the Congress’s latest intervention signals that the issue is set to become a major political flashpoint, with allegations of environmental damage, tribal displacement, and corporate favouritism converging into a broader critique of the government’s development model.
The Great Nicobar project is likely to emerge as a major political battleground, with the Opposition framing it as emblematic of what it calls the Modi government’s “pro-corporate, anti-environment, and anti-tribal” policies.
“The question before the country is simple,” Ramesh said. “Will India protect its natural heritage and vulnerable communities, or will it allow them to be sacrificed for the benefit of a select few?”
