India's 1st indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant to be commissioned on 2 Sept
PremiumPrime Minister Narendra Modi will commission India's first indigenous aircraft career, INS Vikrant, on 2 September
India's first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, which has been in the talks for more than a year is all set for commissioning on 2 September. The ship will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Cochin Shipyard Limited in Kochi.
Along with its first IAC ship, the Indian Navy will also get its new ensign. PM Narendra Modi will unveil the new naval ensign (Nishan) to help it in doing away with the colonial past and befitting the rich Indian maritime heritage.
According to the reports, PM Modi will be on a two days visit to Kerala and Karnataka on 1 and 2 September. He will attend several programmes and also visit the birthplace of Adi Shankaracharya at Kalady village near Cochin airport.
Moreover, he will also inaugurate projects worth around ₹3,800 crores in Mangaluru. In one of the projects to be unveiled in the city, PM will inaugurate a ₹280 crore project for the mechanisation of "Berth No 14" for handling containers and other cargo undertaken by the New Mangalore Port Authority.
The mechanised terminal will help in increasing the efficiency of the port by reducing the pre-berthing delay and dwell time in the port by around 35 per cent.
Phase I of the project has been completed, thereby adding over 4.2 MTPA to the handling capacity, which would further increase to over 6 MTPA by 2025.
The commissioning of INS Vikrant will bring India among the list of nations that can manufacture ships under this category. It will also give a boost to India's attempts to become a self-reliant nation.
Different parts of ships are manufactured in more than 10 different locations in India. They have been assembled to build this engineering marvel.
Designed by the Indian Navy's in-house Warship Design Bureau (WDB) and built by the Cochin Shipyard, a public sector shipyard. The ship is built with some of the top-class state-of-the-art automation features and is the largest ship ever built in the maritime history of India.
INS Vikrant is also a reincarnation, in the sense that the name 'Vikrant' was earlier given to an important ship of the Indian Navy that was decommissioned earlier. INS Vikrant played an important role in the 1971 war.
It is worth noting that the ship has a large number of indigenous equipment and machinery. Its manufacturing included the contribution of major industrial houses in the country as well as over 100 MSMEs. With the commissioning of Vikrant, India will have two operational aircraft carriers, which will bolster the maritime security of the nation, it said.
According to senior Indian Navy officials, the ship will undergo some more tests and trials in the coming month to test helicopter landing and other functions in it.
(With inputs from PTI)
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