The Viraat aircraft carrier was the flagship of the Indian Navy for decades.
New Delhi:
New images accessed by NDTV indicate that the Viraat, the decommissioned Indian Navy aircraft carrier, has already been partially dismantled despite plans to turn it into a maritime museum.
Alang’s image in Gujarat likely puts an end to an ambitious proposal in which Envitech, a maritime consulting firm, hoped to buy the ship from Shree Ram shipbreaks in Alang for approximately Rs 110 million.
In the end, the scrap yards went ahead and dismantled a part of their ship, the ski jump from which Sea Harrier jump planes used to leap into the sky from the deck of the ship, which was India’s flagship for decades. What remains is a huge hole in the ship’s bow superstructure, although the hull itself appears to be intact.
It is unclear if the damage is too extensive for the ship to move now. The cost of restoring the part of the ship that has been destroyed may prove unfeasible.
1. And so all hope seems to fade. Despite the fact that he told us yesterday that he was still willing to sell Viraat if he could get his money “at once”, it appears that shipbreaking Alang has already done the damage. No NOC allowing the ship to be sold clearly sealed Viraat’s fate. pic.twitter.com/sdFJ023H58
– Vishnu Som (@VishnuNDTV) December 14, 2020
Ultimately, it was the Ministry of Defense’s reluctance to provide a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to scrap yards that has likely proven to be a death sentence for Viraat. Without this, the scrap yards refused to transfer the ship.
Earlier today, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also wrote to the Defense Ministry, saying that the Maharashtra government would be “happy to cooperate in the restoration and preservation of the historic ship.”
Envitech, meanwhile, approached the Supreme Court today after it became clear that the NOC would not come from the Ministry of Defense, even though the ship had been sold to Shree Ram Scrap yards for Rs 35.8 million.
In a series of reports, NDTV has highlighted the plight of Viraat, which has been the flagship of the Navy for several decades and came to define the maritime power of India.
Prior to being commissioned into the Indian Navy in 1986, Viraat served as HMS Hermes in the Royal Navy, where he fought with distinction in the 1982 Falkland Islands war in the South Atlantic.
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