Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, has written to Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram about alleged Forest Rights Act violations in the forest clearance granted to the ₹72,000 crore Great Nicobar Island mega-infrastructure project.
In August, the Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar highlighted these violations in a letter to Mr. Oram, alleging that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration had made a false representation to the Centre in August 2022, by certifying that processes under the Forest Rights Act had been completed on the Islands and that forest land diversion processes had also been undertaken, as reported by The Hindu last month. The Council, the key representative body of the Nicobarese people, says that no processes under the FRA have even been initiated on the islands.
