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The Congress party continues to train their guns against the central government’s proposed Great Nicobar Island Development Project.

On Sunday the 10th of May 2026, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh in a detailed letter addressed to union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav accused the union government of relying on “grossly inadequate” environmental studies and concealing key findings related to the mega infrastructure initiative in one of India’s most ecologically sensitive regions.

According to Jairam Ramesh, who is a former union environment minister challenged the government’s assertion that the project’s ecological impacts had been “comprehensively identified, assessed, and effectively managed” through a robust Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process and Environmental Management Plan (EMP).

The Congress leader said the government’s claims, reiterated in the “Great Nicobar Project: FAQs” issued on May 1, were contradicted by the project’s own environmental documents and studies. He argued that legal and scientific norms mandated comprehensive multi-season environmental assessments for port projects in ecologically fragile island territories such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

“The law mandates that port projects, especially those in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are subjected to comprehensive EIA studies,” Ramesh wrote, adding that the island’s “unique biodiversity and ecology” required baseline studies covering at least three seasons to adequately assess environmental impacts.

Citing provisions of the Ministry of Environment’s 2009 Office Memorandum and sector-specific EIA manuals, the Congress general secretary said the project should have undergone extensive physical, chemical, biological and oceanographic studies across multiple seasons. He also referred to provisions under the Island Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019, arguing that substantial portions of the Galathea Bay shoreline had already been identified as eroding coastal stretches by ISRO’s 2021 mapping exercise.

Drawing on statements made in Parliament by former Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar in 2015, Ramesh noted that even rapid EIAs based on one-season data had earlier been deemed insufficient for coastal projects because they failed to capture the full range of environmental concerns.

Jairam Ramesh alleged that the final EIA report submitted in March 2022 was based largely on “one season study” conducted between December 2020 and February 2021 and included biodiversity and turtle nesting surveys lasting only a few days. He pointed to passages in the report itself that admitted the surveys were “rapid reconnaissance” exercises and acknowledged that dense forests limited the extent of scientific assessment.

“These studies based on which environmental clearance has been granted are not even rapid EIAs and are based on baseline data collection over a few days and weeks at best and are grossly inadequate,” Ramesh said. “These reports are an insult to science and make a mockery of the EIA process.”

The Congress leader further questioned the Centre’s decision to withhold the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted after the National Green Tribunal’s April 2023 observation that there were “unanswered deficiencies” in the environmental clearance granted to the project.

Ramesh said the Ministry’s stand that the HPC report was “confidential” violated principles of transparency and accountability. “When the original environmental clearance appraisal process was in public domain, is it legal to contend that the product of a court mandated reconsideration exercise is confidential?” he asked, urging the government to make the report public “in the interests of good governance and informed public debate.”

The Congress leader also renewed broader concerns over the ecological consequences of the ambitious infrastructure project, which includes a transshipment port, airport township and power infrastructure on the strategically located island. He argued that the island’s globally unique biodiversity would suffer irreversible damage if the project proceeded in its current form.

“The compensatory afforestation argument is completely bogus and you know it,” he wrote to the minister, while also claiming that some security experts believed India’s strategic objectives could be achieved without “inflicting such ecological devastation.”

The Great Nicobar Island Development Project has remained at the centre of an intense debate between the government, environmentalists and opposition parties. While the Centre has projected it as a strategically vital and transformative infrastructure initiative for the Indian Ocean region, critics have repeatedly raised concerns over deforestation, biodiversity loss, impact on indigenous communities and the adequacy of environmental clearances.