Great Nicobar Project India: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has backed the Rs 81,000 crore Great Nicobar Island Project and called it a strategic plan meant to protect India’s national interests in the Indo-Pacific. He said the project is not just about building big infrastructure. In his view, it is also about security, sea route safety, and India’s wider reach in the region. The project was also described by the government as one that will help India reduce dependence on foreign transshipment ports.
Singh was replying to Congress MP Jairam Ramesh, who had raised strong concerns about the environmental and tribal impact of the plan. Singh said that calling it only a commercial project was wrong. He said that such a view was an “incomplete appreciation” of what the project is meant to do.
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He also said, “The repeated characterisation of the project as just a costly commercial venture overlooks the strategic realities of the region,” Singh said.
Government on Great Nicobar
According to Singh, the island’s location gives India a major edge because it sits near important sea routes. He said, “The project—located in the proximity of vital SLOCs (Sea Lanes of Communication) enhances our maritime domain awareness and adds to our outreach—an advantage that other military stations such as INS Kohassa, INS Utkrosh or AFS Car Nicobar, located further away from SLOCs cannot provide,” he added. This is why the government sees the island as useful for both defence and trade.
The official project plan includes a 14.2 million TEU international container transshipment terminal, a greenfield international airport with 4,000 peak-hour passengers capacity, a 450 MVA gas-solar power plant, and a planned township. PIB also says the island lies about 40 nautical miles from the East-West shipping route, which is one reason the government wants to use it as a strategic maritime and economic hub.
Congress Says the Project will Hurt Nature
Ramesh has strongly opposed the plan. He said the project is “most fundamentally a commercial enterprise” and argued that the government is trying to give it a security label after the fact. He also called the project an “ecological disaster” and said the claim that building a new airport at Galathea Bay is better than expanding INS Baaz is “demonstrably incorrect and logically contradictory”.
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Singh answered that the option of expanding INS Baaz had already been studied earlier, but it was not taken forward. He said, “It would have entailed substantial land reclamation and disturbance to the tribal population, flora and fauna”. He added that Galathea Bay was chosen only after looking at strategic, operational, environmental, and social factors.
Singh also said all “statutory approvals” were taken after proper review and that the government is committed to meeting national security needs while still keeping sustainable development in mind.
