Jairam Ramesh flags secrecy, weak green studies in Great Nicobar project
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday wrote to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav over the Great Nicobar Island project, alleging a lack of transparency and saying
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday wrote to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav over the Great Nicobar Island project, alleging a lack of transparency and saying the environmental impact assessments for different parts of the project are "demonstrably inadequate". In his letter, Ramesh said key reports, studies and mitigation plans linked to the project have not been made public. The letter is the latest in a series of exchanges between Ramesh and Yadav over the project in the past two years. Ramesh said the minister's June 13, 2026 reply to his June 3, 2026 letter was "disappointing and unsatisfactory" and argued that concerns over the project's environmental assessment and ecological impact remain unanswered. Read Full Story "Many thanks for your response, howsoever disappointing and unsatisfactory, of June 13, 2026 to my letter of June 3, 2026. I am sorry to say yet again that the environmental impact assessments of different aspects of the Great Nicobar Island Project are demonstrably inadequate and fall woefully short of guidelines set by the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change itself," the former environment minister said in his latest letter. He said these issues had already been detailed in his earlier letters and that Yadav had "no worthwhile answer" to them. Ramesh said the minister's position was that the conditions attached to the environmental clearance required continuous monitoring, but added that si monthly compliance reports, which are to be made public, have not been available after March 2024.
He also said minutes of project monitoring committee meetings were being uploaded several months after the meetings were held. According to Ramesh, the environmental clearance required conservation and mitigation plans to be submitted within 15 days of the clearance granted on November 11, 2022, but these plans too are not publicly available. He said these included plans to be prepared by the Wildlife Institute of India, the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, the Zoological Survey of India, the Botanical Survey of India, the Institute of Oceanography, the Indian Institute of Forest Management and the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department. "Some of these institutions had been asked to submit revised proposals for monitoring and mitigation plans after incorporating suggestions made by the Environmental Appraisal Committee. These plans too are not publicly available," he said. Ramesh added that it was "strange, to say the least" if such plans had been submitted after appraisal by the committee concerned, and said this raised doubts about their adequacy and reliability. Ramesh also said the updated Environment Management Plan, based on existing and additional studies, was not in the public domain. "There are at least, as far as I have been able to make out, twelve such studies by different institutions. A number of studies are still pending proving that the environmental clearance was granted prematurely and hastily.
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