New Delhi: In a letter to Union minister for tribal affairs Jual Oram on May 13, senior Congress leader and former union environment minister Jairam Ramesh flagged “flagrant violations” of tribal rights in the slew of infrastructure projects being planned on Great Nicobar island, and urged Oram to take immediate remedial action.Ramesh’s letter is one among many letters, appeals and even legal petitions that have listed violations under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (or FRA) over the past few years.‘Flagrant violations’On May 1 this year, the Union government issued a press release listing some ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ or FAQs about the projects being undertaken by the government on the Great Nicobar island. This included a question and response on whether tribal communities would be “safeguarded, ensuring the continuity of their culture and rights”? The response to this FAQ included the following:“All statutory procedures and policy safeguards for the protection of tribal communities have been duly complied with in the Great Nicobar Island Project. Necessary consultations were undertaken with competent authorities and domain experts, including the Anthropological Survey of India, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, and other stakeholders, in line with the Jarawa Policy, 2004 and Shompen Policy, 2015.”This is “entirely false”, Ramesh said in his letter to Oram on May 13. “The Ministry of Tribal Affairs as the nodal agency for implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 must take serious note of the flagrant violation of the rights of tribal communities and due processes under that historic law in the case of the Great Nicobar Island Project and take credible remedial action immediately,” Ramesh said. Here is my letter to the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs on the flagrant violation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 while bulldozing through the Great Nicobar Mega Infrastructure project pic.twitter.com/Tq00sSHUp3— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) May 13, 2026Settlers versus indigenous communitiesRamesh listed several of these violations. One, he said, is that the FAQs mention the Jarawa policy when it is well known that the Jarawas do not live on Great Nicobar Island.Another is that the Union government has cited Gram Sabha resolutions of settler communities as consent under the FRA, and not taken the Gram Sabha consent of indigenous communities (of the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes) who will be affected by the project.Ramesh said in his letter:“The illegality in the above exercise is patent and self-explanatory. Only the Nicobarese and Shompen scheduled tribes are entitled to settlement of individual and community rights under the FRA, 2006.”A third is that the island administration claims that a No Objection Certificate (NOC) signed by the Chairman of the Tribal council of the Little and Great Nicobar, as part of the proceedings of the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SLDC) dated August 13, 2022, amounts to obtaining consent of the entire Nicobarese tribe in Great Nicobar. This is “in contravention” of the FRA, Ramesh said. He noted:“No single person can accord consent on behalf of an entire community that is entitled the rights provided for in FRA, 2006. It is also relevant to note that the Chairman himself later wrote to various authorities including your office on November 22, 2022, withdrawing the “NOC”. However, this extra-statutory “NOC” continues to be cited as consent of the Nicobarese.”Fraudulent consentFourth, the island administration has claimed that an officer of the Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti (AAJVS) has consented on behalf of the Shompens, but the law “does not permit such proxy consent”, Ramesh said. There is also “a serious conflict of interest” because there is an overlap between the top leadership of the AAJVS and ANIIDCO (Andaman and Nicobar Islands Development Corporation) which is the project proponent, he added.This “fraudulent” consent is what a certificate (dated August 18, 2022 and issued by the Deputy Commissioner, Nicobar District) relied on to certify that all rights under the FRA have been settled, Ramesh said, making the certificate “patently false”.The Nicobarese of Great Nicobar island who are currently living in tsunami relief colonies have been writing repeatedly to the authorities expressing their wish to return to their ancestral, traditional lands and requesting the administration to facilitate their return – but nothing has come of these requests, Ramesh added.He urged Oram to withdraw the certificate dated August 18, 2022, the SDLC proceedings dated August 13, 2022, and the illegal gram sabha resolutions of the non-tribals of August 12, 2022. Ramesh said that the FRA “must be implemented in letter and spirit, in provisions and processes in a transparent and accountable manner”.Not the first timeRamesh’s letter to Oram on May 13 is not the first time that questions have been raised about violations under the FRA for the projects on Great Nicobar island.Several reports have emerged of due processes not being followed as per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (or FRA), regarding how permission has been accorded for the projects proposed by the union government on Great Nicobar island. On May 6, The Hindu reported about how the island administration told the Calcutta High Court that Gram Sabha meetings held to obtain consent were conducted with “proper quorum”, despite attendance figures ranging only between 2% and 15% of the population of some of the affected villages. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes had alleged several violations under the FRA in 2023, and had sent notices to the island administration regarding this. In December 2024, Meena Gupta, a former secretary of tribal affairs and retired official under the union environment ministry had filed a public interest litigation in the Calcutta high court highlighting these FRA violations.In August 2025, the Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar had highlighted FRA violations in a letter to Oram, alleging that the island administration had made a false representation to the union government in August 2022 by claiming that processes under the Forest Rights Act had been completed on the Islands — when it had not been done. In September 2025, leader of the opposition Rahul Gandhi had written to Oram to examine these alleged FRA violations, saying that No Objection Certificates (NOC) from the Shompen and Nicobarese indigenous communities was obtained under duress with inadequate information, and that the council had subsequently withdrawn it upon learning about the details of the project.In an article for The Hindu in the same month, Sonia Gandhi wrote that tribal rights had been “sidestepped” in the process of granting clearances for the projects.