NEW DELHI: The Lakshadweep administration plans to acquire 121,359 square meters (0.121359 square kilometers or about 30 acres) of private land on Agatti Island to develop beachfront facilities and build a beach perimeter road on the eastern and western sides of the island. Agatti has an area of only 3.84 km², and its maximum length is 10 km.
Initial notifications in this regard issued on May 25 raised concerns among landowners and scheduled tribe residents of Agatti. Concerns mainly focus on the environmental and cultural impacts of this infrastructure on the small atoll.
According to the notifications seen by HT, a social impact assessment study has been conducted by the Society for Social Impact Assessment and Approval (SIACS) in Kavaratti and a report has been submitted.
According to preliminary notifications, the administration plans to acquire 42,940 square meters of beachfront and peripheral road on the western side of the island and 78,419 square meters on the eastern side of the island.
Abdul Jalil, a resident, said: “We were not consulted at all about these developments. We are concerned that such developments will have a huge impact on the people and the local environment. These atolls cannot withstand such pressure.”
Another long-time resident said: “Recent developments, especially with regard to tourism and other infrastructure, have caused a lot of fear among the locals regarding the future of their land and identity. Many also feel that they want to push the locals away from the islands.”
“This is a preliminary notification. This is a preliminary notification,” Lakshadweep Collector Shivam Chandra said in response to HT’s queries on whether consent had been taken from the residents of the affected islands. All interested parties will be given statutory time to raise their objections and will be given time to be heard. Only after that will the final decision be issued.”
He added: “The proposed road is intended for all the public, not just tourists.”
HT reported on February 5 that residents of Lakshadweep are protesting against the Union Territory administration’s attempt to acquire 101,020 sq m of private land for tourism and other projects on Agatti Island on the grounds that this was done without the need for mandatory approval from the Gram Sabha and landowners as stipulated in the law. The land area to be acquired is just over 3% of the total area of Agatti. While this notification said that the social impact assessment study would be conducted in conjunction with the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Tenure, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, it said that the approval of “gram sabhas and/or land owners” was “not mandatory”.
Lakshadweep consists of 36 islands, only 10 of which are inhabited. The land area is just 32 sq km and the lake area is 4,200 sq km, according to a draft Home Ministry memorandum available on the National Scheduled Tribe Commission website. Majority of the population in Lakshadweep belongs to the Scheduled Tribes.
In 2024, HT in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center published a series of stories on how Lakshadweep’s coral reefs are being affected by the climate crisis, especially extreme marine heatwaves since October 2023. The series covered how the impacts of climate change coupled with massive tourism and infrastructure plans threaten Lakshadweep’s fragile balance and impact the lives of local people. Lakshadweep experienced an extreme coral bleaching event in 2024. Heat stress in Lakshadweep (Laccadive Sea) and in southeastern India will set a record in 2024 according to Derek P. Manzillo, coral reef monitoring coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Satellite Applications Center and Satellite Oceanography and Climatology Research Division.
HT reported on July 24 last year that a 24-year study of coral reefs in the Lakshadweep archipelago found that coral reefs had declined to half what they were in 1998 as a result of recurring marine heatwaves, exacerbated by climate change. This 50% decline in coral cover was explained by lower recovery rates after each bleaching event, although coral mortality declined with successive events, said the study published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.
The paper concludes that the fate of Lakshadweep’s coral reefs will be determined by when bleaching events return, underscoring that urgent climate action is critical to securing the ecological integrity of tropical reefs.
