Chennai: It’s not the weather but technology that had let down the efforts to haul Indian Navy’s decommissioned submarine INS Vagli on the Mahabalipuram shore near here for the prestigious Tamil Nadu Maritime Heritage Museum. As a result, the project, scheduled to be ready by mid-2015, is likely to be delayed further.
With the Vela-class warhorse back at Chennai port, the state tourism officials are exploring an alternative method of hauling and installing the vessel, which would form the main portion of the maritime museum to come up on the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation’s (TTDC’s) 30-acre land in Mamallapuram, which is known to earlier mariners as ‘Seven Pagodas’. But only the Shore temple remains there now.
The submarine was towed to Mamallapuram on April 6 this year and attempts were made by a contractor to haul up the vessel on to the shore using steel plates and airbags.
But as this failed to yield the result, on April 21, it was brought back to Chennai harbour, which is considered safe. “A channel of about 100 metres was dug to facilitate the easy movement of the submarine from the high seas to the shore. But, the channel got filled with sludge and thus hampered the smooth movement of the submarine,” a senior TTDC official said.
“At present, we are considering an alternative method of mounting the submarine on a platform and all other works are on,” he added. This Foxtrot class submarine, inducted into service by then Lieutenant Commander Lalit Talwar on August 10, 1974, at Riga, Latvia, in erstwhile Soviet Union, was decommissioned by Indian Navy on December 9, 2010, in Visakhapatnam after 36 years of service under 23 commanding officers.
It was brought to the port here on March 25, 2013 and officially handed over to the state government for the museum project. The contractor — Tradex Shipping Company’s proposal on additional expenditure to be incurred for adopting alternative method for hauling the submarine has been sent to the government for approval.
