'Fix The Printer First': Nicobar Tribal Chiefs Contest Rs 81,000-Crore Infra Project Amid 'Local Neglect'
'Fix The Printer First': Nicobar Tribal Chiefs Contest Rs 81,000-Crore Infra Project Amid 'Local Neglect' Written By, Last Updated: July 24, 2026, 20:28 IST Nicobar
'Fix The Printer First': Nicobar Tribal Chiefs Contest Rs 81,000-Crore Infra Project Amid 'Local Neglect' Written By, Last Updated: July 24, 2026, 20:28 IST Nicobar Tribal Council demands withdrawal of 2022 certificate recognising forest rights, saying it's false, and requests for island development before the transshipment port Great Nicobar lies on the western approaches to the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors. (Getty) On June 30, the Tribal Council of Little Nicobar and Great Nicobar wrote to Union Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram, demanding he withdraw a 2022 government certificate that declared forest rights on their land “recognised and settled." The council, which represents Nicobarese tribal communities across the two islands, called the certificate false in a signed letter, and said it had cleared the way for a Rs 81,000-crore infrastructure project that requires felling close to a million trees across their ancestral forest. In Campbell Bay, the island’s administrative headquarters, doctors at the primary health centre still diagnose patients using photographs of The tribal council raised it directly in their letter: fix the printer, they wrote, and patients would not have to wait on a diagnosis made from a photograph. The letter was obtained by News18 through Dr Pankaj Sekhsaria, associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay’s Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas (CTARA). To view the letter in its entirety, please click here. What’s Being Built The Great Nicobar Island project covers 166 sq km on the island’s southern coast and includes a transshipment port, a civil and military airport, a township, and a 450-MVA gas and solar power plant. About 130 sq km of the project area lies on forest land, and clearing it will require felling close to a million trees. Two tribal groups live in the forest the project will clear: the Nicobarese, who live along the coast, and the Shompen, a largely uncontacted community in the island’s interior. The Dispute Over The “False" Certificate At the centre of the tribal council’s demand is a Recognition of Forest Rights (RoFR) certificate issued on August 18, 2022, by the Deputy Commissioner of Nicobar district. The certificate stated that forest rights over the project-affected land had been recognised, settled, and approved for diversion under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, a law that requires forest rights claims to be settled before forest land can be diverted for a project.
That certificate is what allowed the Environment Ministry to grant clearances for the Great Nicobar project later that year. The tribal council disputes that any such settlement took place. In a five-page letter dated June 30 and addressed to Oram, the council and its village captains demanded the certificate’s withdrawal, calling it false. The sequential timeline behind the certificate is on point. The Lieutenant Governor constituted a Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC) on July 26, 2022. Sixteen days later, on August 12, a gram sabha “unanimously resolved" to allow the diversion of 166 sq km of forest land. The SDLC met the next day, August 13, and concluded that no rights were being infringed. The Deputy Commissioner’s office issued the certificate five days after that, on August 18. Titus Peter, a Nicobarese leader from Pulo Bhabi village in Great Nicobar and a signatory to the June 30 letter, told Mongabay-India in January that no formal recognition of forest rights had been made under the Forest Rights Act. A separate case in the Calcutta High Court, filed by former Union government secretary Meena Gupta and admitted for hearing in May 2026, alleges that the gram sabha was led primarily by non-tribal settlers and that “not a single claim for forest rights… has been processed," on the island. The letters from the Gram Sabha, and from the Office(s) of the Deputy Commissioner of Nicobar have been obtained courtesy of Mongabay India. Who Signed The Letter? Barnabas Manju, Chairman, Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar Islands Moses Israel, Vice Chairman / Deputy Chairperson, Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar Islands Titus Peter, 1st Captain, Pulo Bhabi, Great Nicobar Burnet, 1st Captain, Chingenh, Great Nicobar Augustine Nicodemus, 1st Captain, Pulo Panja, Little Nicobar Haggie, 1st Captain, Pulo Bha, Little Nicobar Benjamin, 2nd Captain, Pulo Ulo, Little Nicobar Titus Rufus, Captain, Afra Bay, Great Nicobar Andrew, 1st Captain, Makachua, Little Nicobar Timothy, 1st Captain, Pulo Patia, Little Nicobar What “Development" Means To The Islanders The council’s June 30 letter was a direct response to a statement by Oram, who had written to fellow MP Jairam Ramesh on May 21 that “it is important to recognise that development and tribal protection are not mutually exclusive." The tribal chiefs used the letter to lay out, point by point, what development means to them. “To us, development means inclusivity in the decision-making process," the council wrote.
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