New Delhi: In a letter to the Union defence minister Rajnath Singh on June 12, senior Congress leader and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh urged the Union government to reconsider its decision to not expand the INS Baaz runway on Great Nicobar Island in the Andaman and Nicobar island group. INS Baaz, commissioned in July 2012, is an Indian naval air station located in Campbell Bay on the Great Nicobar Island. There have been plans to increase the length of the existing runway and construct a naval jetty at the station, but these plans have been in cold storage for around five years. These expansion plans would have “far less adverse environmental impacts” than the slew of projects being proposed on Great Nicobar island, Ramesh had told Singh in a letter on May 16.However, several news houses including The Tribune and The Indian Express on June 8 quoted unnamed sources in the defence ministry as saying that the Defence Ministry had opted for the greenfield airport at Galathea Bay over expanding INS Baaz because extending the runway at INS Baaz to allow operations of larger aircraft would have caused significantly greater disturbance to flora, fauna, and the coastline than building a greenfield site at Galathea Bay.“Sources said the existing runway of the Indian Navy’s INS Baaz, which was recently expanded to 4500ft, will not be expanded to the planned 10,000ft, as it requires significant land reclamation and impacts tribal area, flora and fauna,” Indian Express reported. Instead, INS Baaz would continue to operate, complementing the new facility – the greenfield airport – at Galathea Bay, The Tribune said. While he ‘appreciates the sudden worry for ecological protection’, several considerations need to be taken into account, said Ramesh, commenting on this in his letter to union defence minister Rajnath Singh on June 12. On May 16, 2026, I had written to the Hon’ble Raksha Mantri on some aspects of the Great Nicobar Island Project.In response, on June 8, 2026, anonymous ‘defence ministry sources’ briefed the media.Here is my reply to the Hon’ble Raksha Mantri on what these anonymous ‘defence… pic.twitter.com/QVBh9RglsJ— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) June 12, 2026The new airport, proposed at Gandhi Nagar-Shastri Nagar needs cutting down two forest-covered hills of 115 meters. The proposed site comprises around 225 acres of protected forest and 130 acres of deemed forest, which are part of the territory of the Shompen tribal community and are currently being used by them, Ramesh said.The site also sits on about 142 acres of Island Coastal Zone Regulation (ICRZ)-1A which enjoys the highest protection under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, 2019 and this includes turtle nesting beaches, corals and nesting grounds of the endangered Nicobar Megapode.It would involve reclaiming a creek, the relocation of saltwater crocodiles; the site sits directly on two villages where 234 ex-servicemen settler families reside and they will have to undergo relocation for the third time in recent years, Ramesh pointed out.The proposed site is “in a largely undisturbed, pristine forest bordered by a coastline with ecologically sensitive areas…not been subject to any serious and systematic environmental impact assessment especially since Great Nicobar has been designated as an Important Bird Area, an Endemic Bird Area and also holds the significance of being situated on two international bird flyways-the Central Asian and the East Asian-Australasian bird Flyways-that are accessed every year by several migratory species of birds that flock Great Nicobar seasonally,” he wrote.The airport site at Galathea Bay was first declared as a dual-purpose airport by the Union Home Ministry on March 30, 2022, Ramesh said in his letter. “It has taken the Defence Ministry over six years to make some statement on it, albeit verbally and anonymously. It has been compelled to do so because the disastrous ecological impacts of the Great Nicobar Island Project which includes the proposed airport, in addition to the transshipment port, township and other facilities, have become all-too-evident and are inviting wide-spread concern. In sum, I request you to reconsider your rejection of the full expansion INS Baaz runway that has been recommended by some distinguished naval personnel themselves,” he said.