The National Institute for Research and Development in Defence Shipbuilding (Nirdesh) in Kozhikode is pinning its hopes for revival on the Union Budget to be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday.
The 10-year-old institute functioning directly under the Department of Defence Production on a 40-acre land at Chaliyam has been in state of limbo almost all these years. Funds sourced via the Mazagon Dock Limited, Goa Shipyard Limited, Hindustan Shipyard Limited, and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited are sustaining the project.
When Former Defence Minister A.K. Antony laid the foundation stone for Nirdesh in 2011, the Centre had promised that a world-class ship designing institute would be established at a cost of ₹600 crore in the subsequent years. However, the project was caught in a bureaucratic maze of Ministries of Defence and Finance resulting in the project failing to take off. All these years, some infrastructure came up on the land and training were conducted apart from research collaboration with Central government institutions.
Proposals to design small vessels for the Navy as well as harbour vessels, tugs, ferries, and survey ships and to set up a design software unit and training centre for naval architecture are in the cold storage.
A ₹200-crore revival package that was mooted to revive the project also failed to yield any positive results.
The hope for Nirdesh remained high when Ms. Sitharaman was appointed as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs in 2019 when the second Narendra Modi government assumed office. But neither her maiden budget nor her second budget last year mentioned reviving the project.
Then again the visit of Vice Admiral Anil Kumar Chawla, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief, Southern Naval Command, during a programme in Kozhikode, a year ago gave an indication that the project had a future.
But then the Ministry of Defence only appointed an officer on special duty - V.K.Surendran, who retired from the Mazagon Dock Limited, after its project director Captain B. Ramesh Babu, was repatriated to his parent organisation, in August 2019.