NEW DELHI: Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said Wednesday a proposed $9 billion megaport and city project on the strategic Great Nicobar Island is “destruction dressed in development’s language”.

The island sits at the entrance to one of the world’s busiest aterways -- the Strait of Malacca, through which up to 30 per cent of global maritime trade passes.

The plan to develop the 910 square kilometre island with a container port, airport and city see swathes of pristine rainforest cut down, including land inhabited for millennia by communities with minimal outside contact.

“What is being done in Great Nicobar is one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against this country’s natural and tribal heritage in our lifetime,” Mr Gandhi said in a video message posted on social media, showing him walking through the island’s forests.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the Great Nicobar Island Project “is of strategic, defence and national importance”, and India’s environmental court gave the green light in February. But Gandhi said he would try to stop it.

“What I have seen is not a project,” he added. “It is millions of trees marked for the axe. It is 160 square kilometres of rainforest condemned to die.

Around 9,000 people live on the island, including around 1,200 from Indigenous groups, including the Nicobarese and the Shompen, hunter-gatherers who have shunned contact with outsiders, according to rights group Survival International.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2026