New Delhi, Mar 25 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has met a delegation of tribal leaders from the Great Nicobar Island who are opposing the Great Nicobar project and assured them that he will raise their issues in Parliament and visit the islands to see the reality on the ground.
Sharing a video of the recent interaction, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said development must empower people, not erase them.
“India belongs to all its people, not a select few,” he asserted in a post on Facebook on Wednesday.
“I met a delegation of tribal leaders from Great Nicobar Island, along with leaders of the Adivasi Congress. As I listened to them, one thing became immediately clear: their frustration is not just about a ‘project’. This is about people, their identity, and their right to live with dignity on their own land,” Gandhi said.
“They told me how over 800 families will lose their land to the Great Nicobar Project, including Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups,” he said.
Communities that have lived in deep harmony with nature for generations, protecting the island’s fragile ecosystem long before any government or corporation showed interest in it, Gandhi said.
And yet today, they are being pushed to the margins, he added.
“What struck me was their clarity. When I asked who benefits, they answered plainly billionaires like Adani and Ambani will take control of ports, infrastructure, and resources, while the original inhabitants are left to struggle,” Gandhi said.
At the same time, they spoke about their daily struggles – lack of water, roads, education, and employment, he said.
Yet decisions about their future are being made without properly taking their consent, without due process, and without listening to their voices, Gandhi alleged.
“I assured them I will stand with them, raise this issue in Parliament, and visit the islands to see the reality on the ground,” he said.
A six-member special bench of the National Green Tribunal last month disposed of challenges to the Great Nicobar mega infrastructure project and concluded that it found no good ground to interfere, as there were adequate safeguards in the project’s environmental clearance.
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi had earlier slammed the project and alleged that the BJP-led government has made a mockery of legal and deliberative processes under the project.
Terming the Great Nicobar infrastructure project a “planned misadventure”, Sonia Gandhi had said last year that it poses an existential danger to the island’s indigenous tribal communities and is being insensitively pushed through, making a “mockery of all legal and deliberative processes”.
This was countered by Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav, who had claimed that all clearances were obtained, and defended the project as necessary for the country’s development. PTI ASK KVK KVK
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