A six-member National Green Tribunal (NGT) special bench ruled on Monday that it did not find “any good ground” to interfere in the environmental clearance accorded to the Rs 81,000-crore Great Nicobar mega infrastructure project as there were “adequate safeguards” in the project’s environmental clearance. The bench, headed by NGT chairperson Justice Prakash Shrivastava, also noted the “strategic importance of the project” and the issues that were dealt with by a high-powered committee (HPC) tasked with revisiting the project’s environmental clearance, as per a 2023 order of the NGT.
The mega project, spread over 166 sq km, entails diversion of 130 sq km of forest land and felling of almost a million trees to facilitate the construction of a transshipment port, an integrated township, a civil and military airport and a 450-MVA gas and solar power-based plant. The Centre has pushed ahead with the project amid concerns expressed by the Nicobarese community over dispossession of their ancestral land (which was devastated in the 2004 tsunami), as well as concerns over ecological damage.
