‘Vasco da Gama’, a huge trailing suction hopper dredger owned by Belgium group Jan De Nul N V, will reach the shores of Mumbai on August 29 to start work on a €250-million contract to deepen and widen the channel of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, India’s busiest container port, to help dock bigger ships.

But, the two-year contract, billed India’s biggest dredging work by value, slated to start on September 1, is in jeopardy due to some post tender changes sought by JNPT at the request of next door Mumbai Port Trust, both owned by the Central government.

The contract involves deepening the channel to 15 metres from the existing 14 metres, widening the existing shipping channel from 370 metres to 450 metres for straight reach and extending the length from 33.5 kms to 35.5 km.

Of the estimated 40 million cubic metres of sand, silt, clay and rock to be dredged from the sea bed, some 1.73 million cubic metres will be rock dredging alone.

When completed, the project will enable JNPT to accommodate container ships that can carry as much as 12,500 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

JNPT currently has a depth of 14 metres that enables container ships of 6,000 TEU ships to call with the help of tide.

An equal joint venture between Jan De Nul and Dutch dredging contractor Royal Boskalis Westminster NV was awarded the contract in March after placing the lowest rate of ₹1,966 crore for the work.

Mumbai port’s demand

Mumbai Port Trust now wants to use the dredged rock material for reclamation at its Jawahar Dweep facility to set up more oil tanks and also the proposed reclamation for creation of garden front at Haji bunder.

However, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change while granting environment clearance for the project has stipulated that the dredged material should be disposed of at a pre-designated site (DS-3). BusinessLine has reviewed a copy of the green nod by MoEF&CC. “The contract is a dredge and disposal contract and not a reclamation contract. This is how it was appraised by the Public Investment Board and the Cabinet. How can it be changed post facto,” said a shipping ministry official briefed on the matter. “Reclamation is not mentioned in the tender at all,” he said.

“Changing the scope of the contract post award is also not viable particularly in a lump sum, turnkey contract with no variation,” the official said.

Besides, it vitiates the tendering process and hurts the sanctity of the contract, he added.

The post tender changes sought has also delayed statutory and regulatory clearances from Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs and D G Shipping for Vasco da Gama, a foreign flagged dredger, with a hopper capacity of 33,000 cubic metres, to work in India. Coastal trade is reserved for Indian flag ships and foreign ships are allowed to operate only with the approval of DGS, India’s maritime regulator.

Waiting for clearance

“This is a prestigious assignment which has to be taken in the right earnest and all the clearances have to be processed by the government quickly,” he said.

The dredged rock material cannot be used for reclamation in Jawahar Dweep to build more oil tanks, where sand has to be used which is available in plenty, a marine engineer said, asking not to be named.

JNPT, Mumbai Port Trust and the Jan De Nul-Boskalis consortium declined to comment.

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