New Delhi, Sep 8: Terming the Great Nicobar infrastructure project a \u201cplanned misadventure\u201d, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday said it poses an existential danger to the island\u2019s indigenous tribal communities and is being insensitively pushed through, making a \u201cmockery of all legal and deliberative processes\u201d.<\/p>\n
The collective conscience cannot, and must not, stay silent when the very survival of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes is at stake, Sonia Gandhi said in an article published in \u2018The Hindu\u2019.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur commitment to future generations cannot permit this large-scale destruction of a most unique ecosystem. We must raise our voice against this travesty of justice and this betrayal of our national values,\u201d she said in her article titled \u2018The making of an ecological disaster in the Nicobar\u2019.<\/p>\n
Her remarks come days after Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi wrote to Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, expressing deep concern over the alleged violation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) in the grant of clearances to the Great Nicobar Project, and urged the government to ensure adherence to the due process prescribed under the law.<\/p>\n
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Congress leader and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh has also been highlighting concerns over the Great Nicobar project, claiming that it is inimical to ecology and the rights of forest dwellers and tribals in the area.<\/p>\n
In her article, Sonia Gandhi hit out at the Modi government and said there has been no shortage of \u201chalf-baked and ill-conceived policymaking\u201d in the last 11 years.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe latest in this series of planned misadventures is the Great Nicobar mega-infrastructure project. The totally misplaced Rs 72,000 crore expenditure poses an existential danger to the island\u2019s indigenous tribal communities, threatens one of the world\u2019s most unique flora and fauna ecosystems and is highly susceptible to natural disasters,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNevertheless, it is being insensitively pushed through, making a mockery of all legal and deliberative processes,\u201d Sonia Gandhi said.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that the Great Nicobar Island is home to two indigenous communities, the Nicobarese tribe and the Shompen tribe, a particularly vulnerable tribal group.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ancestral villages of the Nicobarese tribals fall in the project\u2019s proposed land area. The Nicobarese were forced to evacuate their villages during the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. This project will now permanently displace this community, ending its dream of returning to its ancestral villages,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe Shompen face an even greater threat. The Island\u2019s Shompen Policy, notified by the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, specifically requires the authorities to prioritise the tribe\u2019s welfare and \u2018integrity\u2019 when considering \u2018large-scale development proposals\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, the project denotifies a significant part of the Shompen tribal reserve, destroys the forest ecosystems where the Shompen live, and will cause a large-scale influx of people and tourists on the island,\u201d she argued.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, the Shompen will find themselves cut off from their ancestral lands and unable to sustain their social and economic existence, Sonia Gandhi said.<\/p>\n
Yet, the government is stubbornly adamant and shockingly insistent, she added.<\/p>\n
Sonia Gandhi alleged that the constitutional and statutory bodies set up to preserve tribal rights have been sidestepped throughout this process.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs in Article 338-A of the Constitution, the Government should have consulted the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes. It has failed to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government should have consulted the Tribal Council of Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar Island. Instead, the Council Chairman\u2019s plea that the Nicobarese tribals be allowed to return to their ancestral villages has been neglected,\u201d she pointed out.<\/p>\n
Sonia Gandhi further said that the letter of no objection was secured from the Council, but it has since been revoked, with the Council noting that the authorities had \u201crushed them\u201d into signing the letter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Forest Rights Act (2006), which empowers the Shompen as the authority to protect, preserve, regulate and manage the forests, should have underpinned any policy action. Instead, the Shompen have not been consulted on this issue \u2014 a fact which the Tribal Council has now confirmed,\u201d she said in the article.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe country\u2019s laws are being mocked wholesale. Unconscionably, one of the country\u2019s most vulnerable groups may have to pay the ultimate price for it,\u201d she asserted.<\/p>\n
\u201cEcologically, this project is nothing short of an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. The project will require the cutting down of trees on an estimated 15% of the island\u2019s land, decimating a nationally and globally unique rainforest ecosystem,\u201d she pointed out.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change estimates that 8.5 lakh trees may be cut, Sonia Gandhi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a depressing figure, but it may also be a gross underestimate \u2014 independent estimates have suggested that 32 lakh trees to 58 lakh trees may eventually be cut,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s solution to this indiscriminate tree felling is that of \u201ccompensatory afforestation\u201d, a rather poor substitute for the loss of natural, old-growth forests, she opined.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite abundant evidence confirming the same, which includes a National Green Tribunal order, the Government has contrived ways to manipulate this truth through a high-powered committee (HPC). The report of this HPC and the ground-truthing exercise it conducted to reclassify the port site out of CRZ 1A has not been made public,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Sonia Gandhi further argued that from a wildlife standpoint too, the project raises serious concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrimatologists have written to the Government expressing grave concerns about the project\u2019s impact on the Nicobar long-tailed macaque. These concerns have been ignored,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The biodiversity assessments for the projects have come under questioning for critical methodological flaws, Sonia Gandhi said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe assessment of sea turtle nesting sites was conducted in the off-season for nesting. Drones were employed to gauge the project\u2019s impact on dugongs, but these drones have limited capacity and can only assess shallow areas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Finally, the project, including the port, is coming up in a seismically sensitive earthquake-prone zone, she pointed out.<\/p>\n
Locating such a massive project here deliberately jeopardises investment, infrastructure, people and the ecology, Sonia Gandhi added.<\/p>\n
Sharing Sonia Gandhi\u2019s article on X, Rahul Gandhi said, \u201cThrough this article, Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Smt. Sonia Gandhi highlights the injustices inflicted on Nicobar\u2019s people and its delicate ecosystem by this project.\u201d The project, titled \u2018Holistic Development of Great Nicobar\u2019, involves the construction of a transhipment port, an international airport, a township and a power plant spanning more than 160 sq km. (PTI)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, Sep 8: Terming the Great Nicobar infrastructure project a \u201cplanned misadventure\u201d, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Monday said it poses an existential danger to the island\u2019s indigenous tribal communities and is being insensitively pushed through, making a \u201cmockery of all legal and deliberative processes\u201d. The collective conscience cannot, and must not, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national"},"yoast_head":"\n