Prime Minister Narendra Modi will perform Bhoomi Pujan of the Rs 76,000 crore Vadhavan port – touted to be India’s largest container port once ready — in Palghar district of Maharashtra today.

Local villagers and fishermen under the Vadhavan Bandar Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti (VBVSS), however, have been protesting the opening of the port as they believe that it will cause harm to the environment and disrupt 

The groundbreaking ceremony will be held at CIDCO Ground in Palghar. Maharashtra Governor CP Radhakrishnan, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal, Union Ministers of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying SP Singh Baghel and George Kurian will attend the ceremony.

FOR HOW LONG HAS THE PROJECT BEEN IN WORKS?

The Maharashtra government first proposed the Vadhavan Port in 1997, but the plan got shelved in 1997-98 after local villagers protested. It was brought back to the table in 2015 under the Narendra Modi-led government’s ‘Sagarmala Programme’, which aims to push a port-led economy approach, making major ports significant contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The project became a political flashpoint when Uddhav Thackarey vowed to scrap it if elected to power. He claimed during a rally ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections for cancelling the project in 1997 when undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP was in power. However, Thackeray lost the Palghar Lok Sabha seat this year to the BJP.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE PROJECT?

The port, located around 130 km north of Mumbai near Dahanu on Maharashtra’s west coast, is an all-weather Greenfield deep-draft major port off the Arabian Sea. It was approved by the union cabinet in June and is set to be the biggest in the country. It will be the 13th port in India with a capacity of around 298 million tonnes.

The port is a collaboration between Vadhavan Port Project Ltd (VPPL) and Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB) with a shareholding of 74% and 26%, respectively, according to a report by ETV Bharat.

Vadavan Port will be the third major port in Maharashtra along with the Mumbai Port and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port. It will be close to Gujarat, Rajasthan and central India, and also to most of India’s cargo destination locations.

WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PORT?

The Vadhavan Port will likely act as a gateway for the future International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) and India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC).

According to a press release issued after the Union Cabinet Meeting in June, “The world-class maritime terminal facilities will promote PPP and leverage efficiencies and modern technologies to create state-of-the-art terminals capable of handling mainline mega vessels plying on international shipping lines between the Far East, Europe, the West Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Vadhavan Port, on completion, will be one of the top 10 ports in the world.”

The Vadhavan Port, which is expected to relieve some pressure of the Jawaharlal Nehru port, will have four multi-purpose berths including four liquid bulk berths, one RO-RO berth, a Small Craft, a Coast Guard berth and a Railway terminal. The project involves the reclamation of 1,448 hectares of area in the sea and the construction of 10.14 km of offshore breakwater and container/cargo storage areas.

The Vadhavan Port has a deep draft (vertical distance between waterline and bottom of the ship or vessel) of 20 metres, while the Nehru Port has a draft of 15.5 metres.

The Vadhavan Port is expected to handle 23.2 million 20-foot-equivalent units (TEUs) a year. A TEU—a standard unit of measurement to determine container capacity—refers to a shipping container that is 20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet tall.

The project, part of PM Gati Shakti programme, will boost economic activity and also create employment opportunities for 12 lakh individuals. The first phase will be ready by 2029, while the second and final phase is expected to be completed by 2039, according to a report by ETV Bharat.

WHAT ARE THE CRITICISMS AGAINST THE PORT?

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) had in 1991 declared the Dahanu Taluka an ecologically sensitive area and imposed restrictions on setting up industries that can have adverse effects on the region.

In 1997, the environment ministry forwarded the Maharashtra government’s proposal for the Vadhavan Port for consideration to the Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority (DTEPA). The DTEPA in the 1998 September meeting termed the project “impermissible”, stressing that Dahanu was the one of the last surviving green zones in ecologically sensitive area, as per a report by The Print.

Protesters, including villagers, fishermen, blocked highways and sat on hunger strikes to convey their opposition to the project on several occasions in the last nine years.

They fear that the project will hamper the coastal tourism industry in villages such as Vadhavan, Parnaka, Narpad, Bordi, Chikhale, Shirgaon and Saatpati. They fear that the project will involve hill-cutting around their villages.

Source: News 18 

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