The Vizhinjam international seaport project will mark a milestone on Sunday with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan according a reception to the first vessel that called at the port.
Though the history of Vizhinjam dates back to the ‘Ay Dynasty’, which is believed to have ruled over parts of southern India between the 8th and 9th century AD with Vizhinjam as its capital, it was C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, the Diwan of erstwhile Travancore, who perceived the possibility of a commercial seaport at Vizhinjam.
The then administration had even constituted a team of engineers in the middle of the 1940’s to hold a survey of the site for developing Vizhinjam into a major seaport. An engineer from the England-based Harbour Engineering Company was brought in for a marine survey. However, the project was stalled and officers in the then Harbour Division were relocated to other departments.
The project gained momentum again at the beginning of the current millennium in tune with the ever-increasing size of ships — one of the main trends that have emerged in the container shipping industry over the years — which forced the country to scout for a site having a natural draft of 20 m to accommodate mother vessels having a carrying capacity of up to 18,000 TEU .
Vizhinjam, endowed with a natural draft of 20 m and its proximity to the international shipping route, hardly 10 nautical miles from the international shipping channel, caught the attention of governments.
It was after much dilly-dallying and many controversies that the State government entered into a concession agreement with Adani Vizhinjam Port Private Limited (AVPPL) in August 2015 for the development and operation of the Vizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport project on Design, Build, Finance, Operate, Transfer basis for an initial concession period of 40 years.
The construction work for the project commenced in December 2015 and the project was scheduled for completion in December 2019. However, the slow progress of the construction of the breakwater delayed the project. The outbreak of COVID-19 worsened the situation and the deadline was pushed further to 2024. The port is being developed mainly in four phases and phase 1 is to be commissioned by May 2024 as per the revised deadline.
The State government had to face many difficult situations to ensure a peaceful atmosphere in the project area. Among them, a fishermen’s strike spearheaded by the Latin Archdiocese, Thiruvananthapuram, raising various demands literally stalled the progress of the project for months in 2022.
Though a grand reception is scheduled for the project cargo vessel which has called at the port carrying container handling cranes, the overall progress of the ₹7,700-crore project is still 65.46 %. According to the port developer, the project still requires 10 more months to complete the phase-1 works.
