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Bengaluru: India’s apex green court, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) said on Monday (February 16) that there were ‘no good grounds to interfere’ with aspects including the environmental clearance given by the Union environment ministry for a series of proposed infrastructure projects on Great Nicobar Island in the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The Union government has proposed a slew of projects on the Island including an international transshipment terminal, a township, a power plant and a greenfield airport. The projects, costing more than Rs 80,000 crore, will also involve clearfelling trees in 130.75 square kilometers of the island. Experts including ecologists have said that around a million trees, including rainforest trees, will be cut for this.

But all safeguards are in place to protect the island’s biodiversity and people, the NGT claimed in its order dated February 16, accessed by The Wire.

‘National importance’

A coram of justices Prakash Srivastava (Chairperson of the NGT), Dinesh Kumar Singh and Arun Kumar Tyagi, along with expert members A. Senthil Vel, Afroz Ahmad and Ishwar Singh made this pronouncement on Monday. They were hearing cases filed by Ashish Kothari, founder of environmental NGO Kalpavriksh, who had objected to several aspects including the Stage-I Environmental Clearance for the projects in 2022.

In 2024, Kothari had also cited the Island Coastal Regulation Zone (ICRZ) Notification of 2019, and argued that these projects come under ICRZ-IA per the Notification, and that such activities are prohibited in such ecologically sensitive areas. In 2022 too, Kothari had filed a case in the NGT questioning the Stage-I clearance that the Union environment ministry had afforded to the projects in November 2022, which permitted clearing tropical rainforests across 130.75 square kilometers on the Island, for these projects.

The Union........

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