Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently visited Campbell Bay in Great Nicobar, where he met local Nicobarese community members who had previously raised concerns about the Rs 81,000-Rs 92,000 crore Great Nicobar infrastructure project. For several years, concerns raised by environmentalists, marine biologists, researchers, journalists, and sections of the island’s indigenous communities have remained largely at the margins of national debate. Questions have been raised as to whether Rahul Gandhi’s visit will give greater political traction and public visibility to these concerns. Whether this translates into a broader, sustained political or people-led resistance remains to be seen. Before addressing these questions, it is important to understand what the Great Nicobar project entails, as well as the concerns and contentions surrounding it. The Great Nicobar project is being presented as a grand strategic vision of “holistic development,” centred on an international container transshipment terminal at Galathea Bay, a greenfield airport, a power plant, and a township, with the aim of transforming India’s southernmost island into a major Indo-Pacific maritime hub leveraging its proximity to the Malacca Strait. However, Great Nicobar is far from an empty frontier; it is one of India’s most ecologically rich and least understood regions. Moreover, the proposed transshipment terminal lies in one of the world’s most seismically active zones, which reportedly experiences around 44 earthquakes annually.The project involves the diversion of over 130 sq km of pristine tropical rainforest and the felling of approximately 8.6-9.6 lakh trees, according to the official environmental impact assessment. However, conservation experts, including Pankaj Sekhsaria, warn that the actual ecological footprint may be far greater. Some estimates suggest that the forest within this 130 sq km could contain as many as 10 million trees.These forests are not just carbon sinks but centres of exceptional endemic biodiversity. Great Nicobar, the largest and southernmost island of the Nicobar group in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, lies within the Sundaland global biodiversity hotspot, reflecting its exceptional biological richness and endemism. About one in three bird species and one in four plant species found here occur nowhere else in the world. Species such as the Nicobar megapode, Nicobar tree shrew, Great Nicobar serpent eagle, Nicobar pig, and saltwater crocodile are among those considered highly threatened by the project.A view of Great Nicobar island. Photo: Prasun Goswami/CC BY-SA 4.0The island remains largely covered in dense forests, from coastal mangroves to evergreen rainforests, while its surrounding waters lie at the edge of the Coral Triangle, which contains over 75% of the world’s coral species along with immense marine biodiversity. In addition, Great Nicobar lies along both the Central Asian Flyway and the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, supporting significant numbers of transcontinental migratory birds between September and March. There are also unverified indications of potentially new or rare bird sightings, such as the reported Nicobar crake mentioned by ecologists like Pia Sethi, underscoring that the island remains incompletely studied and its full biodiversity is still being uncovered.Critically, this is also home to the Shompen – a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) – and the Nicobarese, who have lived here for thousands of years. The Shompen are a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer community, living in deep forest isolation with minimal contact with the outside world. The Nicobarese, once spread across the island’s western, south-western, and south-eastern coasts, are now largely settled in Campbell Bay following the 2004 tsunami. Their millennia-old existence is deeply intertwined with the island’s ecosystem, embodying generations of ecological knowledge highly relevant in a changing climate.Given their relative isolation, the Shompen have not developed immunity to many diseases prevalent on mainland India. Experts warn that large-scale infrastructure development, along with an influx of mainland workers and settlers – projected to increase the population from around 8,000 to 3,50,000 – could expose them to serious disease risks, in addition to displacement pressures, cultural disruption and irreversible assimilation, potentially threatening their survival. Further concerns arise from the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) of the project, which was limited to evaluating the proposed airport and did not assess other major components of the project. The final SIA remains silent on the broader impacts of the mega-project on both tribal communities, with its assessment largely limited to settlers only.Water security adds another layer of concern. Studies indicate that freshwater in Great Nicobar is limited and largely dependent on shallow, rainfall-fed aquifers that are vulnerable to seawater intrusion – raising concerns about long-term sustainability for large-scale settlements. Central Ground Water Board assessments indicate that much of the island’s geology does not support well-developed aquifers, leading to generally low groundwater yields and, in some areas, brackish water quality.At the centre of these concerns lies Galathea Bay, one of the most important nesting sites in the Indian Ocean for the giant leatherback turtle. The project proposes breakwaters that would shrink the bay’s natural 3-km-wide opening to about 300 metres, potentially altering the wave and sediment dynamics critical for turtle nesting. The bay was earlier protected as a wildlife sanctuary before being denotified for the project in 2021. Notably, field observations and hatchery records from February-March this year reportedly recorded an unusually high number of nests – around 900 – in Galathea Bay.The coral ecosystem debate is equally contentious. As reported by Vaishnavi Rathore in Scroll.in, a 2020 map by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management showed coral reefs along Galathea Bay and other coasts of Great Nicobar. However, an updated 2021 map from the same institute no longer marks reefs along the coastline, instead placing them farther offshore – at locations that some marine experts consider biologically implausible given depth and light conditions. Environmentalists, including Ashish Kothari, have argued before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that such shifts raise serious concerns about how ecological baselines are determined, stressing that critical habitats like coral reefs “do not and cannot magically disappear to suit the convenience of the project proponent.”Economically, the project has faced significant scrutiny. While it is positioned as a transshipment hub to compete with Colombo and Singapore, M. Rajshekhar, writing in Frontline, argues that such comparisons are structurally weak, as these global hubs are long-established logistics ecosystems built over decades through integrated shipping networks, competitive pricing, and operational efficiency—conditions difficult to replicate through standalone infrastructure. He further cautions that the project’s phased financing and implementation approach could undermine viability if core port infrastructure and supporting logistics systems are not developed in an integrated manner, making it difficult to attract cargo in competition with established hubs. Rajshekhar ultimately raises concerns about its economic feasibility, questioning whether the project risks becoming a “white elephant.”Much of the public understanding of these issues stems from sustained research, reporting, and legal interventions by researchers, journalists, and activists over the years. Despite these efforts, the NGT upheld the project’s environmental impact assessment in February 2026, accepting the government’s argument of strategic necessity and stating that adequate safeguards were in place.However, the judgment has been widely criticised. Analyses in Frontline argue that it did not adequately apply the precautionary principle despite high ecological uncertainty and assessed key components – port, airport, township, and allied infrastructure – in isolation rather than as a single integrated ecological intervention.They also contend that the tribunal relied heavily on mitigation measures such as coral translocation and turtle protection, despite their uncertain effectiveness in fragile island ecosystems. A further concern is its dependence on the High-Powered Committee report, viewed as insufficiently independent because it operates within the same administrative ecosystem promoting the project – raising broader questions of institutional bias.Even beyond the NGT ruling, legal concerns around tribal rights and consent remain active. A parallel case before the Calcutta high court questions whether the diversion of forest and tribal reserve land complies with the Forest Rights Act, 2006 and whether genuine free, prior, and informed consent was obtained from the Nicobarese and Shompen communities. Petitioners argue that the rights of the Shompen cannot be treated as administratively “represented” through substitute officials, and that consent processes were structurally inadequate.Critics argue that these and other factors, weaken environmental oversight and prioritise strategic and administrative considerations over ecological risks and the rights of tribal communities. For environmental groups, the NGT order is viewed as part of a broader normalisation of ecological compromise in the name of development and national security.It is in this context that Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Great Nicobar becomes significant. His visit does not overturn any legal clearance, but it alters the trajectory of the debate in real time. By meeting Nicobarese communities and publicly questioning the project, he shifts the conversation from a narrow, technical discussion on environmental clearances to a wider question of democratic legitimacy. His description of the project as “destruction dressed in development’s language” directly challenges the dominant narrative that equates large infrastructure with unquestioned progress.This intervention matters because it brings national political visibility to a project that has largely advanced outside sustained mainstream scrutiny. It reframes the issue from a binary of development versus environment to a deeper set of questions: development for whom, at what ecological cost, and with whose consent? Importantly, the visit expands the arena of contestation beyond courts and expert committees. Large- scale infrastructure projects like these are not shaped by regulatory approvals alone; they are also influenced by public debate, political incentives, media scrutiny, questions of long-term ecological and economic sustainability, and sustained civic engagement. By drawing national attention, the intervention increases the political cost of proceeding without broader consensus and accountability.Rahul Gandhi’s visit might not stop the Great Nicobar project. But it ensures that it can no longer move forward quietly without scrutiny. And in a democracy, that shift – from limited technical oversight to public scrutiny – is often where the real contest begins.Ritu Rao works with the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) on various natural heritage projects.