India News | Great Nicobar Project Disaster-prone, Risky: Ex-environment Minister Jairam Ramesh

New Delhi, Jul 30 (PTI) Former environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday claimed that the Great Nicobar mega infrastructure project is not just an "ecological and humanitarian catastrophe" but it is also "disaster-prone and risky".

The Congress general secretary said locating such a massive project in the islands deliberately jeopardises investment, infrastructure, people, and the ecology.

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There was no immediate response from the government on Ramesh's claims.

"An earthquake of 6.2 on the Richter scale jolted the Andaman and Nicobar Islands yesterday morning. We must recall that the islands are a seismically active zone. The Great Nicobar Mega Infrastructure Project being built here is not just an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe, it is also disaster-prone and risky," Ramesh said in a post on X.

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The area saw a permanent subsidence of about 15 feet during the tsunami of December 2004, he said.

"Locating such a massive project here deliberately jeopardises investment, infrastructure, people, and the ecology," Ramesh said, and shared links to his letters to the Union environment minister last year on this issue.

Last week, Ramesh had alleged that the Great Nicobar project has been bulldozed through by the Modi government through "deception, intimidation, and manipulation".

The Congress leader has been insisting that the present design of the Great Nicobar project "endangers ecology" in a "needlessly unacceptable manner".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)