Tribal Council Warns Great Nicobar Project Threatens Shompen and Ignores Indigenous Consent

Gist The Great and Little Nicobar Tribal Council has raised alarms over the ₹91,000-crore Great Nicobar Island GNI project, accusing local authorities of disregarding indigenous rights. Officials are reportedly pushing for the forced assimilation of the isolated Shompen tribe while simultaneously ignoring the Nicobarese community's appeals concerning land consent and relocation to their ancestral territories. Background The Great Nicobar Island GNI development is a massive infrastructure plan encompassing a township, airport, transshipment port, and power plant. It directly impacts the Shompen, a hunter-gatherer Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group PVTG , and the Nicobarese people. Before recent administrative shifts, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change had issued formal, written guarantees assuring that the mega-project would neither displace the Shompen nor interfere with their isolated existence. Key Pointers - Contradiction of federal assurances: The local administration's reported insistence that the Shompen adopt a "modern lifestyle" directly violates the Union Environment Ministry’s previous guarantees to protect the PVTG from external interference. - Threat to cultural isolation: Locating the proposed Galathea power plant dangerously close to Shompen habitations introduces heavy infrastructure that…