New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a two-day trip to Andhra Pradesh and Kerala from Tuesday to launch a number of development projects, including the New Dry Dock and the International Ship Repair Facility at the Cochin Shipyard Limited.
The PMO said Modi will visit Sri Sathya Sai District in Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday and inaugurate the new campus of the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes and Narcotics (NACIN).
He will interact with officer trainees of the 74th and 75th batches of the Indian Revenue Service (Custom & Indirect Taxes) as well as officer trainees of the Royal Civil Service of Bhutan. On Wednesday, PM Modi will offer prayers at Guruvayur and Thriprayar Shree Ramaswami temples in Kerala before inaugurating important infrastructure projects related to the ports, shipping, and waterways sector, the PMO aid.
In what will be a major boost to the sector, he will inaugurate three projects — the New Dry Dock (NDD), the International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF) and the LPG Import Terminal of Indian Oil Corporation Limited — worth over Rs 4,000 crore.
The NDD built at a cost of about Rs 1,800 crore at the existing premises of Cochin Shipyard Limited is a flagship project reflecting India’s engineering prowess, it said. This one-of-a-kind 310-meter-long stepped dry dock, with a width of 75/60 meters, depth of 13 meters and a draught of up to 9.5 metres, is one of the largest marine infrastructures in the region.
It features heavy ground loading which will position India with advanced capabilities to handle strategic assets like future aircraft carriers up to 70,000T displacement as well as large commercial vessels, thus eliminating India’s dependency on foreign nations for emergency national requirements, the statement said. The ISRF project, built at a cost of about Rs 970 crore, is a unique facility of its own. It has a ship lift system with a capacity of 6000T, a transfer system, six workstations and a berth of approximately 1,400 metres which can accommodate 7 vessels of 130 metres in length simultaneously.