4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 25, 2026 12:44 PM IST
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has said the Great Nicobar Island project is a strategic national initiative to safeguard India’s maritime and commercial interests in the Indo‑Pacific, marking his first response to concerns raised by Congress MP Jairam Ramesh on the mega project.
The Rs 81,000 crore project, Singh said on July 17, will enhance India’s ability to sustain presence, move assets, and monitor critical sea lanes of communication.
Singh was responding to a June 12 and May 16 correspondence by Ramesh, in which he had appealed to consider expanding existing defence assets on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, such as INS Baaz at Campbell Bay, among others, and argued that the Great Nicobar Island project in its current form was a “recipe for ecological disaster”.
The government has proposed an integrated township, a trans-shipment container port, a solar and gas-based power plant, and a greenfield military and civilian use airport as part of the project. Land has also been earmarked for defence purposes on the western flank of the trans-shipment port site.
‘Overlooking strategic realities of the region’
Singh said that Ramesh’s suggestion that India’s strategic requirements can adequately be addressed merely through expansion of existing defence facilities reflects an “incomplete appreciation” of the project and the nature of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific. “The repeated characterisation of the project as just a costly commercial venture overlooks the strategic realities of the region,” Singh said.
He said the projects at Great Nicobar Island are intended to further India’s “commercial resilience” and “bolster national security”. “The project—located in the proximity of vital SLOCs (Sea Lanes of Communication) enhances our maritime domain awareness and adds to our outreach—an advantage that other military stations such as INS Kohassa, INS Utkrosh or AFS Car Nicobar, located further away from SLOCs cannot provide,” he added.
Singh also explained that the possibility of developing INS Baaz as a brownfield project was examined, but was not considered suitable as “it would have entailed substantial land reclamation and disturbance to the tribal population, flora and fauna”. Therefore, he added, the decision to pursue a greenfield project at Galathea Bay was a considered decision based on strategic, operational, environmental, and social factors.
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The defence minister sought to rebut Ramesh’s charge that environmental and tribal concerns have been disregarded for the project, and said all “statutory approvals” have been granted following detailed appraisal by expert bodies, with stringent safeguards and mitigation measures. “…The government remains committed to ensuring that critical national security interests are met as per the evolving threat perception dynamics while factoring in the need for sustainable development of national power,” he said.
‘Most fundamentally a commercial enterprise’
In his response on July 25, Ramesh stressed that the Great Nicobar Island project is “most fundamentally a commercial enterprise” for which strategic rationale is being invented and propagated to build a counter-narrative. This, he said, is being done as evidence that the project will permanently destroy a unique ecosystem has mounted. He also cited the views of retired naval officers, who have questioned the stated defence reasoning of the project.
Specifically, Ramesh rebutted the claims of the greenfield airport at Galathea Bay entailing far lesser environmental, social, and operational costs than an expansion at INS Baaz, terming it “demonstrably incorrect and logically contradictory”. He also sought to stress that the project’s nature is largely commercial.
Ramesh went on to reiterate that the greenfield airport would entail cutting two forested hills, “destruction of forest areas” that are part of the territory of the Shompen tribal community and impact creek and marine life. The Congress MP said that these impacts have not been refuted.