NGT must make public report of panel that reviewed approvals for Nicobar project: Jairam Ramesh
Public calls have been made for the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to release the report of the High-Powered Committee (HPC) it had directed be constituted to review the environmental approvals granted to the Great Nicobar Island Development Project.
The HPC's report was submitted to the NGT in a sealed cover on 8 July 2025, and has not been made publicly available since.
The HPC was headed by the Secretary of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) — the same ministry that granted the original environmental clearance — and included the Chief Secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, who also chairs the project-implementing agency (ANIIDCO).
Requests for related information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act have reportedly been denied on grounds that disclosure would affect India's security and strategic concerns.
The NGT's earlier order (3 April 2023) directing the review had flagged specific deficiencies in the original clearance process, including reliance on a single season of environmental data instead of the mandated three, absence of a translocation plan for thousands of coral colonies, and questions over whether part of the project site fell within a coastal zone category where construction is legally barred.
National Green Tribunal (NGT): Establishment and Powers
The NGT is a specialised statutory judicial body for expeditious disposal of cases relating to environmental protection, forest conservation, and other natural resource matters, including enforcement of legal rights relating to environment.
Key Details
- Established under the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010, notified on 18 October 2010, following the Supreme Court's earlier direction (in cases such as M.C. Mehta) for a specialised environmental adjudicatory body.
- Has original jurisdiction over "substantial questions relating to environment" arising from the implementation of specified enactments (Water Act 1974, Air Act 1981, Environment (Protection) Act 1986, Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, Biological Diversity Act 2002, among others).
- Not strictly bound by the Code of Civil Procedure but guided by principles of natural justice; can apply the "polluter pays" principle, "precautionary principle," and award compensation as relief.
- Appeals against NGT orders lie directly to the Supreme Court.
The NGT's own April 2023 order directing constitution of the HPC to review the Great Nicobar clearances is itself an exercise of the Tribunal's statutory power to reassess environmental compliance; whether it now discloses the resulting report tests the transparency of its own review process.
EIA Notification 2006 and the Environmental Clearance Process
The Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification, 2006 (issued under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986) is the principal instrument governing prior environmental clearance for specified categories of projects in India, including port, infrastructure, and tourism developments of the scale involved in Great Nicobar.
Key Details
- Projects are classified as Category A (require clearance from the Union MoEFCC, appraised by an Expert Appraisal Committee or EAC) or Category B (state-level clearance via State Environment Impact Assessment Authority, appraised by a State Expert Appraisal Committee or SEAC).
- The four-stage clearance process is: Screening, Scoping, Public Consultation (including public hearing), and Appraisal.
- EIA reports are required to be based on baseline data collected across all seasons (commonly interpreted as one full year/three seasons) to capture seasonal ecological variation; the NGT's 2023 order flagged Great Nicobar's EIA for relying on only one season of data.
- Coastal projects are additionally governed by the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification (originally 1991, revised 2011 and 2019), which designates CRZ-I (ecologically sensitive/inter-tidal areas) as generally prohibited for new construction, subject to specified exceptions.
The deficiencies attributed to the original Great Nicobar clearance — incomplete seasonal data, absence of a coral translocation plan, and a possible CRZ-I violation — go to the core procedural safeguards the EIA Notification 2006 and CRZ framework are designed to enforce, making the still-undisclosed HPC report central to assessing whether those safeguards were actually met.
Transparency in Environmental Governance and the RTI Act
The Right to Information Act, 2005 guarantees citizens access to government-held information, subject to specific statutory exemptions, and its application to environmental clearance records is a recurring point of tension between transparency and claimed security or strategic considerations.
Key Details
- Section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act exempts information that would "prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State" from mandatory disclosure.
- Environmental clearance conditions, EIA reports, and compliance reports are, as a general rule, meant to be in the public domain under the EIA Notification 2006 itself, since public consultation and post-clearance monitoring depend on public access to these documents.
- Courts and the NGT have in past cases (e.g., on the "public trust doctrine" and the right to a healthy environment as part of Article 21) emphasized that environmental information disclosure serves the constitutional right to information and to a clean environment, limiting how broadly security exemptions can be invoked for such records.
Withholding both RTI-sought clearance-related records and the sealed-cover HPC report raises a governance question distinct from the environmental merits: whether standard exemptions under Section 8(1)(a) can be applied to a purely domestic environmental-review report, or whether the EIA framework's inherent public-disclosure design should take precedence.
- The NGT's order directing formation of the High-Powered Committee was passed on 3 April 2023.
- The HPC's report was submitted to the NGT in a sealed cover on 8 July 2025.
- The original environmental clearance for the Great Nicobar Island Development Project was granted in November 2022; the total project cost is estimated at approximately ₹81,000 crore (revised from an initial ₹75,000 crore estimate).
- The NGT Act, 2010 was notified on 18 October 2010; the EIA Notification under which the project was cleared dates to 2006.