3 more Congress MLAs to quit in Puducherry, govt sure to lose trust vote: Nirmal Kumar Surana
Bengaluru, Feb 19: Three more Congress MLAs are set to resign from the Assembly in Puducherry, a key BJP leader claimed on Friday even as he asserted that the beleaguered V Narayanasamy government would lose the trust vote.
Two of the four Congress MLAs who quit the House -- A Namassivayam and E Theeppainthan -- have already joined the BJP.
BJP in-charge of the Union Territory, Nirmal Kumar Surana said the other two Congress MLAs -- Malladi Krishna Rao and A John Kumar -- would join the J P Nadda-led party.
"The two will be joining the BJP. They are speaking with our leadership," Surana, also Vice-President of Karnataka unit of the BJP, told P T I.
"Certainly, 100 per cent", he said when asked if the Congress government would lose the vote of confidence in the House.
"That's the only option, I feel", Surana responded to a question on whether imposition of President's Rule is a possibility in the poll-bound Puducherry.
The newly appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Puducherry Tamilisai Soundararajan directed the Assembly Secretariat on Thursday to convene the House on February 22 for the Trust vote.
Surana declined to name the three Congress MLAs he claimed would quit the Assembly.
"I cannot talk now. They are unhappy with Narayanasamy and they want to resign. Hundred per cent they are going to resign", he said.
On whether the BJP is open to taking these three MLAs into its fold, Surana said whoever accepts BJP's ideology and whoever wants to join for the development of Puducherry, his party is ready to take them.
Ruling Congress MLAs met in Puducherry on Thursday night after the Chief Minister was asked to prove his majority in the assembly on February 22.
They did not take any decision on the future course of action and resolved to meet again a day ahead of the trust vote.
In the 33-member assembly with an effective strength of 28, the Congress has ten members, including the Speaker, while its alliance partner DMK has three and lone independent from Mahe region also supports it.
The opposition parties also have 14 members, including the three nominated (BJP), and have said that the ruling dispensation no longer has a majority.
Emerging from the inconclusive meeting held at his residence on Thursday night, an embattled Narayanasamy contended that the three nominated MLAs (all BJP) in the union territory assembly do not have rights to vote on a confidence motion and the opposition strength was only 11 and not 14 as maintained by them.
He charged the BJP with intensifying its design to topple the Congress government, which has been hit by resignations of four party MLAs, including two ministers since last month.
Surana denied Narayanasamy's allegation.
"He (Narayanasamy) could not keep his flock in his fold and he is accusing others. He has not performed and he has been accusing the Lieutenant-Governor. He has not worked and he has been telling lies", Surana said.
He said the Election Commission might announce the poll schedule for Puducherry in the next one week or ten days.
Elections are due in Puducherry and neighbouring Tamil Nadu by May.
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Modi govt rattled by Rahul’s Great Nicobar visit; project concerns need Parliament debate: Cong
New Delhi (PTI): The Congress on Sunday flagged in detail concerns related to ecology, tribal rights, transparency and security, over the Great Nicobar project, and asserted that these considerations must be debated in a parliamentary forum.
The opposition party claimed that the Modi government is "rattled" and in damage control mode after Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi's visit to Great Nicobar last week.
In a statement, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "The Modi Government, clearly in damage control mode after the hugely impactful visit of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, to Great Nicobar on April 28 2026, issued a press note on the Great Nicobar Island Development Project three days later."
This press note does not address any of the serious concerns that have been raised on it by local affected communities, environmentalists, anthropologists, academics, civil society experts and other professionals, Ramesh said.
"These concerns had already been conveyed in detail by me to the Union Minister of Environment, Forests & Climate Change on September 10, 2024 and in a follow-up on September 27, 2024," the former environment minister said.
During his visit to Great Nicobar, Gandhi last week alleged that the Great Nicobar project at Campbell Bay in Andaman and Nicobar Islands was "one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against the natural and tribal heritage of the country".
The government on May 1 released a detailed statement with answers to FAQs (frequently asked questions).
"The Great Nicobar Project is a strategic initiative to strengthen India's presence in the Andaman Sea. It seeks to balance port-led growth with calibrated environmental safeguards. Protection of indigenous communities remains central to its planning," the government statement had said.
"The project combines strategic, economic, and ecological priorities. This ensures that development is sustainable, inclusive, and aligned with national interests," it had said.
In his four-page detailed statement, Ramesh spelt out the key concerns over the Great Nicobar project.
Flagging ecological concerns, Ramesh said the Great Nicobar is unique and distinctly different from all other islands in the Andaman and Nicobar group.
"The Government's claim that only 1.82% of the total land of the island group is being used for the project is irrelevant and misleading. It ignores the ecological and biological richness of the Great Nicobar ecosystem, which is unique both in the island group and in the world," he said.
"Galathea Bay, the site of the port, is unequivocally a Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) is a site where port construction is not allowed. As per records of the Zoological Survey of India, Galathea Bay is home to more than 20,000 coral colonies, a key marker of a CRZ-1a categorisation. Similarly, the beach here is the most important nesting site of the Giant Leatherback turtle in the Northern Indian Ocean," Ramesh said.
The recently concluded turtle nesting season saw record turtle nesting at Galathea Bay, he pointed out.
Ramesh alleged that institutions like the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) were literally coerced to play a key role in the environmental clearance and related process for the project.
"These very institutions have now been awarded projects for biodiversity research and monitoring in Great Nicobar. There is a clear conflict of interest here," he argued.
In addition, a couple of reputed and independent-minded institutions that have been very critical of the project have been blacklisted by the Modi government, he said.
Similar is the case with the high-powered committee (HPC) constituted by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in the matter of the challenge to the project's environmental clearance granted, he said.
All the HPC's members either represented the project proponents or agencies which granted the clearances, Ramesh said.
He said the proposal for compensatory afforestation in Haryana is a travesty of ecological principles.
Flagging tribal rights concerns, Ramesh said the Nicobarese Tribal community has expressed concerns multiple times about the project and its impact on their forests, rights, and way of life.
"In November 2022, they withdrew the NoC they had granted for forest diversion saying that they were rushed to sign by concealing the extent of tribal areas to be affected by the project. Representatives of the Nicobarese community also stated in a recent press conference that they were being forced to voluntarily surrender their land for the project," he pointed out.
The claims stand even more exposed in the matter of the Shompen, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG), that lives a life of hunting and gathering in the deep forests of Great Nicobar, Ramesh said.
The Shompen are a primarily uncontacted community and there are no non-Shompen speakers of their language, he pointed out.
"It is not clear then how the project authorities have taken their informed consent, which is both ethically appropriate and legally mandated," Ramesh said.
Pointing out that government release has claimed that the airport in Great Nicobar will eventually handle 10 million passengers annually, Ramesh said this appears prima facie to be a huge over-estimation given that the current airport at Port Blair handles 1.8 million passengers annually.
"The deliberations of the Forest Advisory Committee for granting the project's forest clearance were not made public. The report submitted by the High-Powered Committee that examined the clearance granted to the project was kept confidential. The field report prepared by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management (NCSCM) that pronounced the status of the site of the port from CRZ-1A to CRZ-1B overnight, remains confidential," he pointed out.
Ramesh also flagged security concerns about the project, saying no less a person than the courageous former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd) himself has argued in an article that "the security capabilities of ANC (Andaman & Nicobar Command) need to be addressed separately and must have no linkage with the developments contemplated for GNI (Great Nicobar Island)."
"There is thus no need to link India's legitimate security imperatives with the so-called 'development project' - complete with a township, high-end tourist infrastructure, and large transshipment terminal - that the Modi Government is intent on bulldozing through and on which it is now trying to muzzle genuine and much-needed debate hiding behind "security considerations", he said.
"These considerations must, at the very least, be discussed and debated in a Parliamentary forum," Ramesh said.
