Tribal Affairs Ministry Opposes Nicobarese Leaders Joining Great Nicobar Forest Rights Plea

The Union Tribal Affairs Ministry has told the Calcutta High Court that Nicobarese leaders seeking to join a petition on Great Nicobar Island forest rights are neither necessary nor proper parties. Former IAS officer Meena Gupta filed the ongoing petition to challenge the government's claim that forest rights under the 2005 Forest Rights Act were settled on the island.

Court Arguments

Four Nicobarese residents moved to join the plea on July 9, 2026. They argued that government certificates of forest rights settlement relied on gram sabha consent from non-tribal settler communities rather than local tribes. The island is home to the Nicobarese, the largely uncontacted Shompen tribe, and families of ex-servicemen from the mainland settled there from 1969 onward. The impleadment document states that no tribal gram sabha meetings took place to discuss diverting forest land for the mega-project. The Tribal Affairs Ministry asked the court to reject the plea and claimed the tribal leaders slept over their rights during the statutory process.

Project and Consent

The Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island project involves a transshipment port, township, greenfield airport, and power plants across 166 square kilometres. The Lieutenant Governor formed a Sub-Divisional Level Committee on July 26, 2022. A special gram sabha was held sixteen days later to approve the land diversion. Barnabas Manju, chief of the Great Nicobar Tribal Council and part of the committee, signed a No Objection Certificate. Manju later wrote to the Union Environment Ministry to withdraw consent and seek rehabilitation in ancestral villages, stating the NOC was read out only in parts and concealed forest diversion details. Souparna Lahiri, a policy advisor at the Global Forest Coalition, noted that a tribal chief alone cannot give village consent without a written decision and quorum from the forest gram sabha. The Calcutta High Court scheduled the next hearings for November 25 and 26 after the Supreme Court refused to stay the proceedings.

Context

The Forest Rights Act of 2005 legally protects the historical rights of tribal communities over forest land and resources. Large infrastructure projects on forest land require prior settlement of these rights and formal consent from local gram sabhas. Legal disputes often arise when development plans overlap with indigenous territories and traditional ancestral lands.