Antony seeks report on M V Pavit running aground

[nrj]

Taking serious note of the incident where a merchant vessel M V Pavit ran aground at Mumbai [ Images ] coast on Sunday, Defence Minister A K Antony has asked Navy and Indian Coast Guard to submit a report as to how the abandoned ship entered Indian waters undetected.

"Defence Minister has asked for a report from Navy and Coast Guard on the incident. He will also be holding a meeting on coastal security next week which would be attended by officials from Navy, Coast Guard and Defence Ministry next week," Defence sources said.


Concerned naval authorities have also been asked to submit a report on it.

The Panama-flag vessel M V Pavit, started to drift towards Mumbai coast after its engines failed a month ago near the coast of Oman, leading to flooding of its engine room.

The crew-member of the 70 meter long merchant vessel was rescued following a distress call near Oman.After the Coast Guard received intimation of the ship being grounded near Juhu beach, it sent out one of its vessels and a helicopter to assess the situation.Meanwhile, the sources said possibility of salvaging the ship is being looked at.

Antony seeks report on M V Pavit running aground - Rediff.com India News

 

[nrj]

 

[nrj]

How Pavit breached 3-tier security

After MT Pavit ran aground off Juhu beach on Sunday, serious questions about coastal security have resurfaced.

The merchant tanker was abandoned and unmanned near the Ras Al Madrakah coast of Oman but it drifted towards the Arabian Ocean region where huge shipping traffic is observed.

Passing from countries like United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, Pavit drifted to India after one-month journey and ran aground off Juhu beach.

After the 26/11 attack when the terrorists entered the city through the sea route, the entire western coastal security was given a thorough overhaul.

In addition to the main three-tier security comprising the Indian Navy, Coast Guard and coastal police, the customs and fishermen were roped in to help the coastal police with patrolling. Fishermen, who have a formidable presence in the seas in the non-monsoon seasons, were instructed to alert the coastal police or Coast Guard in case of any suspicious activity.

The Indian Navy is the apex agency responsible for coastal security assisted by other agencies such as the Coast Guard and police wings of respective states.

But the easy entry of the unmanned ship has brought to the forefront serious security lapses.

First, MT Pavit missed the eye of Naval warships patrolling in high seas, especially in the Arabian sea region. Naval warships, other than keeping check through radio transmitters and navigational communication systems, also regularly conduct reconnaissance and surveillance by helicopters mounted on the warships. The helicopters regularly carry out sorties to ensure that the shipping traffic is smooth.

After crossing the high seas and the Exclusive Economic Zone, MT Pavit again went unnoticed by the Coast Guard ships. Coast Guard use helicopters and Dornier aircraft to carry out search and rescue operations.

The third layer of coastal security which MT Pavit eluded was the state police.

The state police have acquired offshore patrol vessel, interceptor crafts and also amphibian vessels to carry out patrolling in shallow waters.

Officials blamed the lapses in coastal security to the lack of coordination among security agencies of the Centre and the state agencies.

Marine Police, Coast Guards and the Navy are the prime security agencies responsible for managing the security at the coastal level. These agencies have their own set-ups to gather intelligence and they even share a part of it with the nodal agency or with the Multi-Agency Centre.

A police officer, requesting anonymity, said: "Each agency has its own concerns and reasons to share only a limited part and specific type of information and intelligence gathered by them."

He said that most of the times these agencies fail to share precise information with the nodal agency.

"For instance, there are limitations in sharing the information about technical intelligence and human intelligence. The capabilities to read and assess destroyed hard disks and to analyse the voice over internet protocols are also an issue."

The information gathered is shared with the nodal agency, which has to eventually filter it and pass it to the other agencies.

"The drifting of MT Pavit on Mumbai shore is a classic example of lack of coordination. This vessel should have been observed and reported much before it could have come close to the Mumbai shore, but no agency so far has taken the responsibility for this lapse," said a marine security official.

Experts say MT Pavit did not take any particular channel to reach the coastline.

"Being an unmanned ship, MT Pavit could have gone unnoticed or unchecked as many a times ships stop in the sea for small repairs and maintenance and thus officials would not have checked it. All the ships passing and going out are not checked, it is not possible and there are many rules which we have to adhere to," said a defence spokesperson

How Pavit breached 3-tier security - Mumbai - DNA

 

[nrj]

Ghost ship sinks India's coastal defences claims

m.v. Pavit drifted undetected for over 100 hours to Mumbai's shores

Children play near m.v. Pavit, a Panama-flagged vessel that ran aground on the Juhu beach

India's post-26/11 coastal defences have been brutally exposed by Pavit, a 1,000-tonne Panama-flagged merchant vessel, which ran aground on Mumbai's Juhu shore on Sunday, undetected by the new, three-tier security ring on which at least Rs. 700 million has been spent.

The ship, which was abandoned by its crew last month and reported sunk, drifted for more than a hundred hours through India's maritime territory before being detected late on Sunday afternoon.

The Navy, responsible for security beyond 12 nautical miles; the Coast Guard, which patrols the zone between 5 and 12 nautical miles; and the newly created maritime police, all failed to detect it.

There was no official word, though, on who was responsible for the failure — the second in recent weeks of an abandoned ship being washed up here.

In October 2010, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said India had made "significant progress" in improving its coastal defences since 26/11. In particular, he pointed to the setting up of control rooms to coordinate patrolling by the Navy, the Coast Guard and the maritime police.

Alarmed by a series of pirate attacks on maritime traffic off India's shores, Defence Minister A.K. Antony said in January this year that coastal security was on the government's "immediate agenda."

Satish Agnihotri, Director-General of Shipping, said inquiries were needed to establish "for nearly 100 hours when the ship was in Indian waters why the detection did not happen." He refused comment, though, on who might have been responsible, saying it would not "be appropriate on my part to talk about the sister agencies."

Long-standing fears

Long-standing fears that terrorists could exploit gaps in India's coastal defences were underlined on 26/11, when a 10-man Lashkar-e-Taiba assault team sailed undetected into the city on a hijacked fishing boat. Experts have since warned that terrorists could also load ships with explosives, or even biological and chemical weapons.

In its report for 2010-2011, the Ministry of Home Affairs records that 183 interceptor boats had been provided to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Lakshadweep and Daman and Diu since April 2009. These States and Union Territories, the report says, have also benefited from Rs. 4 billion spent on 73 coastal police stations, 97 checkpoints and 58 barracks, as well as an annual grant of Rs. 1.51 billion for their operation. In addition, the Ministry of Home Affairs gave Rs. 627.75 million to the Ministry of Defence for 15 additional Coast Guard patrol ships with specialised capabilities.

Sources in the State government said Maharashtra had so far received 40 patrol boats and was waiting for the delivery of 17 more. The boats were, however, not in use because of the monsoon, the sources said. Police sources said the boats, delivered to an accelerated timetable, also suffered chronic mechanical failures, and trained crew were in short supply.

Sources in the police and the Coast Guard said the boats would be of limited use until India's fishing boats were fitted with specialised transponders, which would allow unidentified and potentially hostile vessels to be intercepted with precision.

Highly placed defence sources, however, said the trial of the three systems —satellite-based tracking, Very High Frequency and Automatic Identification System — were just beginning, and would take over a year to complete.

Global concern

Ever since 9/11, governments across the world have invested billions of dollars in port security, fearing that hijacked or unmanned ships could be used to transport weapons of mass destruction or lethal quantities of conventional explosives into urban concentrations.

The accidental detonation of 1,400 tonnes of explosives stored on SS Fort Stikine, a 7,142-gross tonne freighter, killed at least 740 people and injured more than 1,800 at Mumbai's port in 1944.

In a paper published in the South Asia Intelligence Review, maritime security expert Vijay Sakhuja recorded that India's port authorities were "conscious of scenarios such as a fully loaded tanker exploding in harbours, explosives in containers, ship hijacking and terrorists as stowaways." However, he said, they were "constrained by the lack of adequate security personnel and equipment."

A senior official of the Home Department admitted that ships coming to the shores of Mumbai did pose a security hazard, and he would convene a meeting between the Navy and the Coast Guard shortly to discuss the issue.

The Hindu : News / National : Ghost ship sinks India's coastal defences claims

 

[nrj]

According to officials from the Directorate General of Shipping (DGS), the vessel was drifting at the speed of 2 nautical miles per hour and no agency could detect it. "Even other vessels passing by MT Pavit didn't inform us about an unlighted vessel in the waters," said Satish Agnihotri, DG Shipping. "We are looking at increasing surveillance and will be asking the government to expedite the installation of radars of the coast," he added.

Radars could have helped detect ship - Hindustan Times

 

[nrj]

Navy seeks report on ghost ship

Admiral Verma's move comes after Defence Ministry asks Navy to keep it updated on the episode

Sources in the Navy said the naval authorities in Mumbai would trace the sequence of events leading to the vessel drifting some 800 to 900 nautical miles after its owner abandoned it off the coast of Oman on June 29 and two weeks later it was reported to have sunk.

The path of the vessel would have to be reconstructed on the basis of winds and tide charts especially since the ship drifted through the Indian maritime territory for more than 100 hours before being detected on Sunday.

The incident assumes importance as the Navy, which is tasked with the overall responsibility of coastal security after 26/11, has been maintaining continuous vigil and carrying out both coastal patrol and aerial surveillance in the area, along with the Coast Guard.

The question, which the report would have to answer, is how the vessel escape detection by the radar. The sources sought to reason that as the vessel was reported to have sunk, it could have been off the 'watch-out' radar.

As for the Automatic Identification System transponders on boats, the sources said the matter was being pursued by the Director-General of Light Houses.

The Hindu : News / National : Navy seeks report on ghost ship

 

[thakur_ritesh]

and the other day that article was claiming the intel on 26/11 was such that it could have been averted, sure i believe that piece of crap. even after intel flowing in since august that paks will be doing something big we couldnt do a damn about it and eventually had 100s killed. some work we do, really!

india is as prone to another 26/11 as ever before and all are to blame, the navy, the CG, the state police, the central and state governments but then yeah this cant be an intelligence failure since there were no inputs about this ship sailing through.

but wait, this will all be washed aside and this will possibly be the only reporting we will see on this followed by subtle reporting and then no more.

 

[Sridhar]

The grounding of the Pavit off the coast of Mumbai cannot be, once again, attributed to bad weather and coincidence. It is clear that something is afoot, and that our security agencies are absolutely clueless

What exactly is happening, why and how are derelict ships with suspicious antecedents drifting to Mumbai's shores, so frequently; and more importantly, what can be done about it?

The media is full of reports about how yet another ship is gracing the Mumbai coastline, and reports seem to centre around how a small tanker, the MV Pavit, with a lower freeboard, does not look as impressive as a not-so-large container ship with high cubics and taller freeboard. There is the usual reportage, the expected pass-the-buck kind of response, and the truth of course lies somewhere else. Here are some facts.

# About a month ago, towards the end of June 2011/early July 2011, the Pavit, (IMO number 9016636) with a complement of 13 Indians on board, on a voyage from the Persian Gulf towards Somalia, reported engine trouble and sought assistance after being adrift for three days. Read an account of the rescue operation in the report titled, (Fleet Air Arm helicopter rescues seamen off Oman.)

# The seafarers were transferred to another merchant ship, the Jag Pushpa, and repatriated to India. The Pavit was apparently left to her fate in the waters of the Arabian Sea. There are rumours that the Pavit was acting as a supplier of marine fuel to Somalia to facilitate piracy activity, and that this was one of the reasons why the crew chose to abandon the ship. Why the owner, or the insurers, did not send one of the many ocean-going rescue tugs to tow the ship back is not known.

# The Pavit, in all appearances, is a well-maintained ship. It is not old, either, or decrepit. If an engine failure for three days in mid-ocean meant seafarers started abandoning ships, then probably a large percentage of the world's fleet would have been derelict by now. The simple fact that the Pavit after she was abandoned did not sink, means that there was some intervention by somebody to ensure that she stayed afloat. This was likely by way of a tow as well as some basic minimal repairs in the reported leakage from the stern gland. Incidentally, stern glands leak all the time, and repairing them while at sea is a very normal and fairly simple practice.

# This time of the year, winds and currents do not push ships southwards down from the Omani coast towards India. Quite the opposite, actually, as any basic knowledge of what happens during the south-west monsoon will reveal. Even if it has drifted due to some freak weather, the prevailing tendency would have been to move towards the Gulf of Kutch. To reach without any assistance the coast of Mumbai is absolutely impossible.

# There is no information from the Director General of Shipping on whether an inquiry or investigation was carried out on the Indian crew and complement of the Jag Pushpa as well as the Pavit when they landed in India. There is no information on who the registered agents for the Pavit were, what information they may have provided about the status of the ship after it was abandoned, and most importantly, what attempts were being made, if any, to regain control of the Pavit.

So, what could have been done?

# A dead ship drifting around in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world is certain to have been noticed by a vast variety of ships and reported in. Especially if she was not transmitting any recognition signals on her AIS (automatic identification signals). However, if she was transmitting her AIS, then certainly there was somebody, somewhere who was tracking her as she got closer and closer to the Indian coast; this is standard operating procedure for owners and insurers.

# One of the easiest measures would be for satellite tracking of all ships which are within 12 miles, or even more, of the Indian coast. This data is freely available. The big question is which agency will take this data, analyse it, spot the odd ones out which are not transmitting their AIS signals, or are too close without any business to be there? A proposal that seafarers, who are between exams, to be deputed to handle such information under a Vessel Tracking Scheme has been hanging fire for decades now, as the assorted ministries still try to get their act together.

# Rescue co-ordination, even if done in the Indian Ocean by a British warship, is monitored in India. The Jag Pushpa, by law, is supposed to provide full information on the episode to the Indian authorities. This information then becomes the core of an inquiry and investigation, especially since the seafarers on the Pavit were also Indians, and this could easily have provided ample advance information on the true antecedents of the Pavit as well as the shape of things to come.

Interim, on the basis of educated opinion as well as circumstantial evidence, it can safely be surmised that this ship, also, was somehow brought to within miles of the Mumbai coast and then released. That it landed on the coast of Juhu and not somewhere else, is more a question of nature favouring us again than anything else.

(Veeresh Malik started and sold a couple of companies, one of them a shipping firm. Now back to his first love, writing, he is also involved actively in helping small and midsize family-run businesses re-invent themselves. He can be reached at [email protected])
The Pavit—yet another attempt to hit Mumbai? - Moneylife Personal Finance site and magazine

 

[Sridhar]

At 9 am on Sunday, Chaudhari said the Santacruz police again received information that the ship had parked itself on the beach near Ruia Park, which falls under the Juhu police's jurisdiction. The Juhu police, it turns out, had been informed by lifeguard Bangela at around 7.30 am.

"I was on duty on Saturday night but did not see the ship. At 7.30 am on Sunday, however, I spotted the ship drifting towards the shore. I called up the police emergency number 100 and informed them about the ship. After a few hours the SRPF and police teams arrived at the spot, but by then the ship had already drifted towards Ruia Park," Bangela told The Indian Express.

"When we were informed about the ship, we informed the police control room and the Coast Guard," said Arun Bhagt, Senior Police Inspector of Juhu police station. But Coast Guard officials have gone on record saying they first heard about Pavit when the Mumbai Police Commissioner called the local Coast Guard chief.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), Rajnish Seth, denied there was any confusion about jurisdiction and in fact claimed that the Coast Guard had been informed on Saturday night itself. "There are no problems over jurisdiction at all. As far as I am aware, the main police control room immediately informed the Coast Guard on Saturday night itself," he said.

When asked why the Coast Guard was maintaining that it got the information only on Sunday afternoon, Seth said: "I will have to check the logs of the main control room. However, the question of the police informing the Coast Guard should not arise in the first place. It should be the Navy who should know about the vessel first, then the Coast Guard and then the police."

Mumbai police sat on ship warning for 14 hours - Indian Express

 

[Sridhar]

Coast Guard says m.v. Pavit incident is not a security lapse

VINAYA DESHPANDE
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"It is not possible for any country to monitor its coastline for 24 hours all 365 days"

When the Coast Guard received an alert about m.v. Pavit on June 29 after a distress call was sent from the vessel, it had calculated that the adrift vessel would take approximately 30-35 days to reach the south Gujarat coast. When the police called them two days later to tell them about the ship, the first question authorities asked was, "Is it MT Pavit?"

"We had calculated the distance and the speed of the ship the day we received the alert. But then we received information that the ship had sunk. So we removed the alert," highly placed Coast Guard sources told The Hindu on Tuesday.

The unmanned, adrift vessel was found grounded near the shore of Mumbai's Juhu-Versova beach early on June 31.

"When the police called us to tell about a ship which has run aground, the first thing we asked was, 'Is it m.v. Pavit?' But we were not expecting it because we had records of the ship as a known case of sinking," an official said on condition of anonymity.

Officials denied that the incident exposed lapses in the coastal security. "It is not possible for any country to monitor its coastline for 24 hours for all 365 days. Also, no other passing ship reported that a ship was moving without its light on. If we had received an alert that the ship had not yet sunk, we would have actively looked for it," a senior official said.

Asked about the possibility of a rogue ship trying to do it on purpose, when there will be no alert to any agency, senior officials said: "In case of any intelligence input, we can assure you that all the three agencies will put up such a strong surveillance that it won't be possible for anyone to penetrate."

Apart from physical surveillance, the Coast Guard is also putting in place Coastal Radar Stations on the coastline of the country. "The trial is going on in Gujarat. Some radars have been installed there," a Coast Guard official of the West Zone told The Hindu.
The Hindu : News / National : Coast Guard says m.v. Pavit incident is not a security lapse
"These Coastal Radar Stations can detect ships 24-30 nautical miles away," a senior official said. But this will be implemented phase-wise after 2011.

The Hindu : News / National : Coast Guard says m.v. Pavit incident is not a security lapse

 

[nrj]

Mumbai unguarded: Nobody saw a 1000-ton ship coming

Mumbai: At Juhu Beach, the MV Pavit has turned into a local attraction, with tourists and others taking photos of the massive ship that's been here since Sunday, when it ran aground.

But the massive ship is in fact, a 1000-ton warning sign that Mumbai remains unguarded at sea. It passed undetected through three tiers of security - the Navy, the Coast Guard and the Coastal Wing of the Mumbai Police. For a city whose worst terror attack began with the arrival of ten young Pakistanis on a boat in 2008, the new lapses are inexplicable.

Defence Minister AK Antony has asked the Navy and the Coast Guard for a detailed report.

The Pavit, 77 metres long, was registered in Panama and was abandoned near Oman about a month ago after serious technical issues with its engines. A distress call led to its crew being rescued.

It then drifted into the Arabian Sea and entered India's exclusive economic zone which extends 200 nautical miles off the Mumbai coast. For nearly 100 hours, experts estimate, the ship without any lights - an anomaly that should have attracted scrutiny - got closer and closer to India till strong currents and wind finally thrust it within feet of Juhu Beach.

That's when Ramesh, a life guard, saw it. "I came for my shift at 5.30 in the morning and I first saw the ship in the water around 50 kilometres away when I checked through my binoculars, there was no one in the ship. I informed the Juhu Police Chowkie."

The Mumbai Police denies reports that it waited for 12 hours before informing the Coast Guard, during which time the ship ran aground.

The Coast Guard says media reports and other records showed that the Pavit had been abandoned and its crew rescued after a distress call before the ship sank near Oman. So they really weren't looking out for it. The Navy says that that though radars must have shown the ship sailing into Indian waters, it was not possible to tell that the Pavit was unmanned - which would have led to an immediate alert.

Less than a month ago, Mumbai was attacked with three serial blasts. The city is meant to be on high-alert. The Pavit proves the complete lack of coordination and security that the city has to contend with.


Mumbai unguarded: Nobody saw a 1000-ton ship coming

 

[nrj]

Stranded ship MV Pavit's distress message ignored: sources

Mumbai: While MV Pavit, the oil tanker stranded at the Juhu beach in Mumbai, was out of Indian waters its crew had sent a distress message to Indian authorities, according to sources.

Sources, however, added that after the tanker was reported sunk by the owner to the UK centre, the alert was lifted by Indian authorities.

Locals claimed that they saw the ship near the shore on Saturday night, while the Coast Guard authorities came to know of it only on Sunday.

The presence of the ship on the Juhu beach has now sent the Navy and the Ministry of Defence into a tizzy.
Naval Chief Admiral Nirmal Verma has sought a detailed report on the MV Pavit that drifted into Indian waters on June 29, but has remained undetected.

The main points of reference in the report will be how the vessel remained undetected, drifting through the three-tiered maritime security cordon off the Indian coast. It also seeks to identify the gaps in this cordon and carry out corrective action.

Stranded ship MV Pavit's distress message ignored: sources - India News - IBNLive

 

[Param]

No moron could detect a Ship this size, how the F*** are going to detect some Pak Submarine?

I fear,with so much Laxity this country is just waiting for another massive unprecedented terror strike.
And the next time the perpetrators may conceal their nationality and carry out their mission under the garb of some International organisation.

 

[bengalraider]

This is a serious lapse from all parties, just think this pavit was empty the next one could be carrying a thousand kasab's.

 

[Godless-Kafir]

Whats interesting is that the Ship had no engines and how the monsoon winds blew the ship exactly to Mumbai from Oman!!! This shows a lot on how traders in the past must hv navigated!

 

[nrj]

Worst case, it filled with dirty nukes. I'm sure our radiation detectors wouldn't have worked either. It could've burned port/ships or even just a nuclear material spill on shore would have brought devastation.

Our security cover is becoming a joke!

 

[sandeepdg]

^^ Yeah, so much for securing Mumbai, mate ! Lousy incompetent buggers, always game for excuses.

 

[nrj]

Are our coasts guarded at all?

CAG indicates serious security lapses in Coastal Security

Even as the Government was searching for lambs to sacrifice over the up the security lapse that came to light when an "abandoned" merchant ship MV Pavit drifted to Mumbai's Juhu beach. The ship went undetected, breaching the three-tier security wall, and the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) findings have exposed with horrific chinks and vulnerable gaps in India's coastal security.

The auditor found that interceptor boats, a significant armour in the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) valet, were found unsuitable for operation in rough weather and could not be utilised beyond sea state. In normal weather, too, the endurance of these boats was round just four to six hours and was restricted to coastal operations upto three nautical miles only. Till May 2010, Home Ministry has supplied 125 such boats to state governments and Union Territories.

Further, the CAG found that ICG lacked vital equipments such as hand held global positioning system (GPS), night vision binoculars, search and rescue transponder (SART), emergency position indicating radio beacons (EPIRB). To top it all, agency unlike its terrestrial counterpart the Border Security Force (BSF) lacks intelligence backing. It has no means to gather information about 35,000 boats plied from Gujarat coast daily. In absence of credible intelligence it was becoming difficult to trace the culprits. Besides, more than 5,000 Dhows generally operate from Gujarat and new crafts are built / added every year. The crafts carry out traditional trade with Gulf and African countries.

As per ICG analysis it requires 175 ships and 221 aircraft for effective patrolling of the extended economic zone (EEZ), coastal and shallow waters. Against this, the ICG has only 68 ships/vessels and 45 aircraft. Out of 28 ships/vessels available with ICG for patrolling of the entire West Coast, 16 ships/vessels, of all types, were based in the Maharashtra and Gujarat area.

The Border Management Group setup, in 2002 within in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), on the recommendation of Group of Ministers (GOM) had requested Indian Coast Guard in August 2002 to prepare a comprehensive manual on coastal security for uniform and co-ordinated approach. Though the draft manual was submitted by Indian Coast Guard to MHA for approval in January 2003, there has been no further communication on the subject between ICG and MHA.

The CAG has also criticised government attitude towards maritime security, saying it has failed to issue clear-cut directions or enunciate a policy for coastal security. Post 26/11 the government further compounded the confusion, first designating ICG as the agency for guarding coastline with the support of Navy and the designating Navy as the overall authority responsible for maritime as well as coastline security.

While auditing the accounts of ICG, an important layer responsible for coastal security, the CAG noted that agency does not maintain a complete and comprehensive database of its operations. "In all the search and rescue (SAR), pollution control, anti-poaching operations etcm the ICG could not furnish information about the number of cases where the missions were not successful or could not be carried out due to inadequacy of resources or other constraints," said the audit report tabled in Parliament on Friday.

Even, though an inter-ministerial group took a comprehensive review of coastal security after the 26/11 incident, the CAG after a test check found that atleast three crucial stations did had interceptor boats (IB) or interceptor crafts (IC) even as late as December 2010. At least 16 Coast Guard stations did not have basic facilities like jetties for berthing ships, fuelling facilities etc. In other cases, ICG stations do not have their own assets and are using hired vessels. Further, the ICG is functioning with ships which have outlived their prescribed life and were meant to be decommissioned but which have not been phased-out as replacements have not materialised. Almost half of the Advanced Offshore Patrol Vessels (AOPVs) and 72 per cent of the Fast Patrol Vessels (FPVs) have outlived their utility.

The CAG further found that the Five Year Plans proposed by the ICG have been unrealistic and unachievable. Despite the fact that the Ministry of Finance / Ministry of Defence have curtailed the financial outlays of these plans, the Indian Coast Guard has been unable to spend the amounts approved. On the operational side, the failure to utilise capital allocations has resulted in the non-achievement of procurement plans in terms of ships and aircrafts.

utilise capital allocations has resulted in the non-achievement of procurement plans in terms of ships and aircrafts. The Coast Guard has been able to achieve just 50 per cent of acquisitions in Ninth Plan (1997-2002) and just 43 per cent in the 10th Plan (2002-07). Not a single acquisition fructified in the 10th plan period, against the planned targets. Post 26/11 incident, the Government has sanctioned 14 new stations, of which just five have been activated till December 2010.

Rough seas

* Interceptor boats unsuitable for operation in rough weather

* Coastal operations possible only upto three nautical miles

* Lacks hand held Global Positioning System (GPS), night vision binoculars, search and rescue transponder and emergency position indicating radio beacons

* Coast Guard requires 175 ships and 221 aircraft for effective patrolling:Has 68 vessels and 45 aircraft

* Almost half of the advanced offshore patrol vessels and 72 per cent of the fast patrol vessels have outlived their utility

Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine

 

[Zebra]

I think it is a clear case of mismanagement of our defense and home ministry .

They can not detect a ship of this size and are dreaming to become super power .

 

[nrj]

MV Pavit guided to Mumbai coast: Experts

MUMBAI: The drifting of MV Pavit off Mumbai coast still remains a mystery maritime industry experts feel the ship may have been brought very close to Mumbai purposely and set adrift. It was impossible for the abandoned ship to go undetected, especially in the busiest shipping lanes of the world.


Veeresh Malik, shipping and marine security expert, said, "There had to be some intervention to ensure the ship stays afloat. The ship is not in a decrepit condition either which means the vessel remained afloat by way of tow or because some basic repair were carried out."


According to reports, the ship sunk after it was abandoned off the Oman coast on June 29 before drifting and getting grounded off Juhu Versova beach on July 31. The crew members of the abandoned ship were rescued by US Naval ship and brought to Kandla by Indian merchant vessel MV Jag Pushpa.


Malik said, "The winds and current during this time of the year would not push the ship southwards down from Omani coast towards India. It should have drifted towards the Gulf of Kutch. The fact that it moved towards Mumbai leads to the suspicion that it did get some assistance to reach Mumbai."


He said a dead ship drifting around is certain to have been noticed by a variety of ships and reported, especially, if she was not transmitting any recognition signals on her AIS (automatic identification signals). "However, if she was transmitting her AIS, then certainly there was somebody, somewhere who was tracking her as she got closer and closer to the Indian coast. This is standard operating procedure for owners and insurers," Malik said.


A member of the Ship Breakers' Association said, "After the ship was abandoned there were no indication or reports that owners or insurers of the ship made any attempt to tow the ship away to repair the engine. It is the moral duty of the shipping company to not only save the life of crew members but also salvage the ship."


He said the owners should have easily taken the vessel by tow to the coast of Oman, where they could have carried out the repairs. "It is a mystery why the owner did not do this as the hull of the ship appears fine and does not show any sign of leaking fuel," he said.


Towing away MV Pavit will be a long drawn process. "The owners and the salvage company will have to enter into intricate negotiation on the cost of refloating the grounded ship. This may take a week or more as there is no immediate scare of oil spillage from this ship, even though it has tilted at almost 60 degrees," an official said.


He said that the salvage operation will be similar to that for MV Wisdom. In this case, the ship will be brought in a perpendicular position to the beach before hauling it in to the sea. MV Pavit is smaller and being a tanker vessel is considered much safer than other vessels like merchant ships or naval ships.


MV Pavit guided to Mumbai coast: Experts - Times Of India