Great Nicobar Island Development Project

The Great Nicobar Island Development Project is a large infrastructure plan for Great Nicobar, the southernmost island of India in the Bay of Bengal. It plans to build a big container port, an international airport, a power plant and a new township on the island. Supporters see it as a way to turn India's farthest island into a major trade and security hub. Critics see it as a serious threat to a rare rainforest, to wildlife and to two tribal communities who live there.

Where is Great Nicobar?

Great Nicobar is the largest island of the Nicobar group, in the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Its area is about 910 sq km. Its southern tip, Indira Point, is the southernmost point of India. South of Indira Point lies the Six Degree Channel (also called the Great Channel), a sea passage about 160 km wide that separates India from Indonesia's Sumatra region.

The western entrance of the Strait of Malacca, one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, is only about 150 km away.

Why does India want this project?

• Trade: A huge share of world shipping passes near the island, on the route between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific through the Malacca Strait. Today, much of India's container cargo is shifted between big and small ships at foreign ports such as Colombo, Singapore and Port Klang. This shifting is called transshipment. India wants its own transshipment hub so that this business, and the money it brings, stays in India.
• Security: The island sits next to the Malacca Strait, a narrow "choke point" that many countries' oil and trade ships must pass. A strong Indian presence here helps India watch the region and respond quickly. An airport that can be used by both civilians and the military adds to this.
• Development: The plan promises jobs, tourism and better connectivity for a remote island.

Where did it come from?

The project was planned by NITI Aayog, the government's policy think tank, and its official name is the "Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island". It is being carried out by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Integrated Development Corporation (ANIIDCO). Key steps so far:

• January 2021: the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife denotified (removed the protected status of) the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and the Megapode Wildlife Sanctuary. Galathea Bay is a key nesting beach for the giant leatherback sea turtle.
• August 2022: the Tribal Council of Great Nicobar and Little Nicobar gave a no-objection certificate (NOC) for denotifying 84.1 sq km of tribal reserve land. In November 2022, it withdrew this NOC, saying important information had been hidden from it.
• 12 August 2022: special gram sabha meetings were held at Campbell Bay, Laxmi Nagar and Govind Nagar. They passed resolutions supporting the forest diversion. On 18 August 2022, the administration issued a certificate saying that all forest rights on the land had been settled.
• 27 October 2022: the Environment Ministry gave Stage I (in-principle) forest clearance. November 2022: it gave environmental clearance.
• April 2023: the National Green Tribunal (NGT) set up a high-powered committee to look again at the environmental clearance. On 16 February 2026, the NGT found no good ground to interfere, saying adequate safeguards were in place.

What will be built?

The project covers about 166 sq km, roughly a tenth of the island, and is planned in phases over about 30 years. Its four main parts are:

1. An International Container Transshipment Terminal at Galathea Bay, with a final capacity of about 14.2 million TEU (TEU means "twenty-foot equivalent unit", the standard size of a shipping container).
2. A greenfield international airport (built on fresh land), for both civilian and defence use.
3. A 450 MVA gas and solar based power plant.
4. A new township with housing, offices and tourism facilities.

The cost was first estimated at around ₹72,000 to ₹75,000 crore. Later estimates are higher, at about ₹81,000 crore [Unverified].

What is the environmental cost?

The project needs about 130.75 sq km of forest to be diverted. A government reply to Parliament in 2024 put the number of trees that may be felled at around 9.64 lakh; some scientists think the real number could be higher. The forest here is a rare tropical evergreen rainforest. The island is part of the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, declared in 1989 and added to UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) network in 2013.

Inside it are two national parks notified in 1992: Campbell Bay National Park in the north and Galathea National Park in the south. The island is home to the leatherback turtle, the Nicobar megapode (a ground bird that builds large nest mounds), the Nicobar long-tailed macaque, saltwater crocodiles and coral reefs. To make up for the lost forest, compensatory afforestation (planting trees elsewhere) was planned mainly in Haryana's Aravalli region, more than 2,000 km away.

Who lives there?

Two tribal communities live on Great Nicobar:

• The Shompen: a small, semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer group living in the interior forests. Their population was 229 in the 2011 Census. They are one of India's 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), and they have very little contact with outsiders.
• The Nicobarese: a larger community, many of whom lived on the west and south coasts before the 2004 tsunami forced them to move.

Most of the island is a tribal reserve under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation, 1956. Outsiders cannot enter it without permission. The government also adopted a special policy for the Shompen in 2015, which says that the welfare and integrity of the Shompen should get priority in large development proposals on the island.

What does the law require before forest land is diverted?

• Under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (renamed the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam in 2023), the Centre must approve any use of forest land for non-forest purposes.
• Under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, the rights of forest dwellers must first be recognised. A 2009 order of the Environment Ministry requires the affected gram sabhas (village assemblies) to certify that the FRA process is complete and to give consent for the diversion. In the Niyamgiri case (2013), the Supreme Court gave gram sabhas of the Dongria Kondh the final say on whether bauxite mining on their sacred hills would harm their rights.
• The petitions in the Calcutta High Court argue that this consent process was not followed properly on Great Nicobar. The main petition is a PIL (public interest litigation: a case filed for the public good) by Meena Gupta, a retired IAS officer and former Secretary of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. It questions the gram sabha meetings of 12 August 2022, their resolutions, and the forest rights certificate of 18 August 2022. Reports say attendance at these meetings was only about 2% to 15% of the villages' population. The FRA rules require a quorum (minimum attendance) of 50%. The PIL also says the protective buffer zones around the national parks were cut down. The High Court ruled that the petitions are maintainable, which means the court can hear them. The Centre challenged this. It argued that the petitioner had no link to the islands and that the project is of national importance. On 5 October 2026, the Supreme Court refused to interfere. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant said the PIL raises crucial questions about tribal rights and the environment. So the High Court will now decide the case on its merits, with hearings listed for 25 and 26 November 2026.

Commonly confused concepts

• Great Nicobar vs Andaman Islands: The Andaman and Nicobar groups are separated by the Ten Degree Channel. Great Nicobar is in the Nicobar group, south of that channel. The Six Degree Channel lies further south, between Great Nicobar and Indonesia.
• Biosphere Reserve vs National Park: A national park is a legally protected area under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, where human activity is strictly limited. A biosphere reserve is a larger landscape with a protected core and buffer areas where people may live and work. It is recognised under UNESCO's MAB programme, which is not a binding law.
• Stage I vs Stage II forest clearance: Stage I is in-principle approval, given with conditions. Stage II is the final approval after those conditions (such as compensatory afforestation and FRA compliance) are met. Trees can legally be cut only after Stage II.
• Transshipment port vs gateway port: A gateway port handles cargo going into or out of the country's own hinterland. A transshipment port mainly shifts containers from one ship to another for onward journeys.

Issues, criticism and the way forward

• Ecology: Critics say the rainforest, coral reefs and turtle nesting beaches cannot be replaced, and that planting trees in Haryana cannot replace an island rainforest. They also point out that the environmental study used limited, single-season data.
• Tribal rights: The withdrawal of the Tribal Council's NOC and doubts about gram sabha consent raise questions under the FRA. For a tiny, isolated group like the Shompen, contact with large numbers of outsiders can bring disease and loss of culture.
• Disaster risk: The island lies in an active earthquake zone and was badly hit by the 2004 tsunami. Critics say large construction here is risky.
• The government's position: The government says the project is of strategic and national importance, that only a small part of the island's forest is involved, and that clearances came with many safeguards and monitoring committees.
• Way forward suggested by experts: careful, multi-season scientific studies; full and transparent consent of tribal communities; strong, independent monitoring; and phasing the work so that damage can be checked and corrected.

Concepts to Know

• Transshipment: Moving a container from one ship to another at a middle port, before it reaches its final destination. Like changing trains at a big junction station.
• Choke point: A narrow sea passage that many ships must use. Whoever controls or watches it has great influence over trade.
• Denotification: Removing the legal protected status of an area, such as a sanctuary or tribal reserve, so that it can be used for other purposes.
• Compensatory afforestation: Planting trees on other land to make up for forest cut down for a project.
• Gram sabha: The assembly of all adult voters of a village. Under the FRA, it is the body that starts and decides forest rights claims.
• Leatherback turtle: The largest living sea turtle. It is listed in Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, the highest level of protection.