New Delhi: Indian Navy’s decommissioned aircraft carrier INS Viraat, which was in news during the Lok Sabha 2019 election campaign, will be sold for scrap, the defence ministry said on Monday. Viraat, the world’s oldest aircraft carrier, looks to meet the same fate as that of INS Vikrant that saw action in the 1971 war. Vikrant’s scrap was bought by Bajaj Auto, which then used its steel to make a new 150 cc bike with the same name: Vikrant. “Indian Navy has been incurring expenditure on the upkeep of INS Viraat on the provision of services like electricity and water and repairs till date,” minister of state in the ministry of defence Shripad Naik informed Parliament in a written reply. INS Viraat was decommissioned in 2017.
Mr Naik said that INS Viraat could not be handed over to any state government because of non-receipt of a self-sustaining financially complete proposal.
“Thus, in view of considerations of safety, security etc., a decision to scrap INS Viraat has been taken in due consultation with Indian Navy,” he added.
INS Viraat was commissioned into the Navy in 1987.
Earlier, there were reports that Maharashtra’s cabinet had approved a `852 crore proposal to convert the INS Viraat into a museum on a public-private partnership basis. The proposal was that the private company would conserve the ship and use it for activities like a maritime museum, virtual galleries, adventure sports like sailing and scuba-diving and training of merchant navy
crew, said news reports.
During the peak of Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an election rally had accused the Gandhi family of using aircraft carrier INS Viraat as its “personal taxi.”
