India’s UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List has reached 78 entries after five additions announced on September 29: Bagh Cave Paintings, the Group of Temples of the Chambal Valley, Udaigiri Caves, Ginnorgarh Fort and the India-South Africa proposal, Sites of Satyagraha. The UNESCO profile for India shows the full list.
It is tempting to read that number as a conservation milestone. It is not. A Tentative List entry is not World Heritage status and obliges no one to protect anything new. The gap matters most where heritage meets biodiversity, infrastructure, security and Indigenous rights, as it does in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Colonial Penal Settlement of Andaman Islands and Nicobarese Cultural Continuity entries were submitted on May 22, 2026. Narcondam Island has waited since 2014, as has the Cellular Jail, which the new penal-settlement entry widens.
UNESCO defines the list as an inventory of properties a country intends to consider for nomination. A nomination cannot be complete unless the property is listed and has had a Preliminary Assessment by UNESCO’s Advisory Bodies (glossary; FAQ). The list creates no sanctuary, monument protection, tourism cap or development moratorium. Those come from domestic law.
Narcondam shows this. The 6.8-square-kilometre volcanic island is the only home of the Narcondam Hornbill and, per the dossier, is a sanctuary under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, with a management plan. Yet in 2014, the year it was listed, the environment ministry approved a radar station there, threatening a population of a few hundred birds. The plans were later shelved. Neither sanctuary status nor the listing stopped the approval; scrutiny did. Narcondam and the Cellular Jail have each spent about twelve years on the list without a nomination.
The new entry links Chatham Island, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (Ross) Island, Viper Island and the Cellular Jail as one penal system from 1858 to 1945, each island with a distinct function. Conservation is already under way: the Administration reports restoring Viper Island’s gallows and guard house and strengthening the Cellular Jail foundation under Swadesh Darshan. But four islands designed as one system need one management plan. Tourism, forestry, disaster preparedness and heritage cannot each run their own for the same coastline, and any nomination must show effective management.
The Nicobarese proposal covers the seven islands of the Central (Nancowrie) group. UNESCO’s entry describes stilted beehive houses, canoe-making, Chowra’s pottery, customary law and community practices tied to land and sea. The region is already a Tribal Reserve under the 1956 Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation. Here the issue is not conserving structures but who defines heritage, who decides which changes are acceptable, and who benefits from recognition.
UNESCO’s rules are direct. Under paragraph 64 of the Operational Guidelines, States Parties shall consult and cooperate in good faith with Indigenous Peoples through their own representative institutions to obtain free, prior and informed consent before including affected sites on the Tentative List. That applies at this earliest stage. So what consent was sought from Nicobarese institutions, and will the record be made public?
The question is live. On Great Nicobar, the Tribal Council withdrew consent to the Rs 81,000-crore infrastructure project in 2022 and, in June 2026, demanded withdrawal of a certificate saying forest rights were settled. The Calcutta High Court’s Port Blair bench is hearing petitions on how consent was obtained; the administration disputes the claims. Great Nicobar is not part of the listed property, but a country asking the world to recognise Nicobarese continuity will be judged on how it treats Indigenous decision-making elsewhere.
Three tests follow. The protection must be integrated. Heritage, forest, wildlife, tourism and disaster agencies need a shared site-level framework rather than parallel decisions; the Operational Guidelines already expect a nominated property to show adequate legal protection and an effective management system, so gaps are better fixed now than during evaluation.
The rights-holders must be decision-makers, not stakeholders to be informed. That means working through the community’s own institutions, publishing the consultation record and treating a refusal as final.
The outcomes must be public. Are historic structures maintained? Are ecological values improving on Narcondam and elsewhere? Are visitor numbers monitored against what a fragile island can bear? Do communities share in the benefits? Without published indicators, a Tentative List entry is a promise nobody can audit.
India’s 78 are not newly protected sites. They are properties India will consider nominating. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the test begins after the announcement: whether it changes how decisions are made, and who makes them.
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth