New Delhi: The Congress criticised the Centre on Friday after a media report claimed that official maps of Great Nicobar Island had been altered to remove corals. The party said that this was not an ecological update, but rather a "bureaucratic rewrite" intended to avoid environmental regulations. The opposition party claimed that when reality gets in the way of corporate desire, the Narendra Modi administration just redraws it.
Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary in charge of communications, published on X a media story saying that between 2020 and 2021, corals vanished from maps of the Great Nicobar island's shoreline, while crucial green zones were substantially diminished.
“Another day, another revelation of how the Modi government has bulldozed the Great Nicobar Mega Infra Project through due process. Now we learn that official maps of the island have been airbrushed to remove corals from the map,” said Ramesh.
According to the report he presented, the 2020 map showed vast coral reefs around the island's southern and western beaches, including Galathea Bay, where a proposed international container transhipment terminal is planned, TNIE reported.
“By 2021, the revised government map moved these reefs mid-sea, where it is biologically impossible for coral reefs to exist. But the shift in the reef’s location on the map conveniently paved the way for the mega-project,” Ramesh claimed.
According to Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, official maps from 2020 classified almost the entire Great Nicobar Island as a CRZ-IA zone, where port construction was strictly prohibited. However, he pointed out that by 2021, Galathea Bay had been excluded from this category, effectively clearing the way for development.
Ramesh suggested that this reclassification was not based on environmental grounds but was instead an administrative move designed to sidestep ecological safeguards, alleging that the government had altered classifications to serve corporate interests.
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, writing in an English daily, described the ₹72,000-crore Great Nicobar Mega Infrastructure Project as a reckless venture that endangers the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes and threatens one of the world’s rarest ecosystems.