‘Won’t surrender’: Great Nicobar tribes allege pressure to ‘give up’ villages for mega project

Members of the Tribal Council of Great Nicobar were verbally told to issue a “surrender certificate” for some ancestral villages.

New Delhi : Members of the Tribal Council of Great Nicobar say the Andaman and Nicobar administration has asked them to give up claims to some of the villages in which they used to live before the 2004 tsunami –– a request they are not keen to accede to because the old villages are an integral part of their culture and heritage.

Great Nicobar tribal council says asked to surrender ancestral villages for mega project. Satellite image of North Sentinel Island, one of the Andaman Islands. (Representative image)

In a meeting with a few reporters, including Hindustan Times’, in New Delhi on Thursday, the members referred to a January 7 meeting at Andaman Public Works Department Guest House in Campbell Bay with the UT’s administration, which included officials from the deputy commissioner’s office and the Andaman Adim Janjati Vikas Samiti (AAJVS), a registered society monitoring and overseeing the welfare and protection of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs). The Tribal Council members who addressed the press include: Barnabas Manju, Chairman, Tribal Council; Titus Peter, 1st Captain, Pulo Bhabi; Hosie Phillp, 2nd Captain, Pulo Bhabi and Burnet, resident, Chingenh.

During the meeting, they added, they were verbally told to issue a “surrender certificate” for some ancestral villages. The land of these villages will be utilised for the Great Nicobar Holistic Development project which has four major components: an International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICCT); an international airport; a power plant; and a township, for which an area of 166.10 sqkm is required. Of this, forest area is about 130.75 sqkm and tribal land is 84.10 sqkm. The total cost of the project is estimated at ₹81,800 crore.

Chandra Bhushan Kumar, chief secretary of A&N administration, said he had no details of the January 7 meeting being referred to. “We are trying to find out (details),” he added. He also said he had no idea the tribal council was holding a press conference.

Tribal councils are elected self governing bodies of any tribe for overseeing welfare of the community.

“We communicated to them that we do not wish to surrender these tribal lands because they are a significant part of who we are. We used to have our plantations, agriculture, fishing, our foraging grounds, our festivals in those villages. We are very concerned about these developments and wish to communicate that we do not want to part with tribal lands. If the development project comes up outside tribal areas, we have no objection to it,” Manju said at the meeting with reporters. He added that the tribal council is also opposed to the diversion of forests.

Before the massive 2004 tsunami, the Nicobarese — the indigenous people of Nicobar Islands — had a total of 27 villages on the East and West coasts of the island, according to a researcher. Most of their villages were submerged in the tsunami, which left a large number of people dead. Those who survived were shifted to Campbell Bay. “Whenever they demanded to return to their ancestral lands, they were told that they would be resettled after the road was built,” a researcher who has worked in the islands said.

HT first reported on April 14, 2023 that the Tribal Council of Little and Great Nicobar, in August 16, 2022, withdrew the no objection certificate (NOC) given for diversion of land –– roughly half of which is tribal reserve land –– for the controversial Great Nicobar Township and other infrastructure projects.

The withdrawal of the permission was after the council said it was not informed that the land being marked for development included areas and villages that the communities lived in prior to the 2004 tsunami disaster.

“As you are well aware, 84.10 sqkm of this diverted forest is a tribal reserve which is now set to be denotified. We were not made aware of this information, nor were we shown on a map the extent of the Tribal Reserve area that falls within the proposed plan. We were shocked and distressed to learn that parts of our pre-Tsunami villages of Chingenh (along the south east coast) and Kokeon, Pulo Pacca, Pulo Baha and In-haeng-loi (along the southwest coast which are affiliated to the largest Great Nicobarese village Pulo Bhabhi) also will be denotified and diverted as part of holistic development plan of Great Nicobar,” said a letter sent by the tribal council, withdrawing their NOC to the diversion, to Amardeep Raju, member secretary of the environment ministry’s expert appraisal committee in 2022.

Great Nicobar has four communities: the Great Nicobarese, who lived along the south-eastern and up to the mid-western coast of the island, the Little Nicobarese, who lived from the mid-western coast to the northern coast; the various Shompen bands, who are scattered in the interiors of forests and valleys; and migrants and settlers who occupy settlements along the east coast.

“The Forest Rights Act has not been implemented here yet and hence we do not have access to our tribal lands under the Forest Rights act,” Titus Peter said.