Officials at the National Institute for Research and Development in Defence Shipbuilding (Nirdesh) at Chaliyam here are pinning their hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will arrive at Kozhikode on Saturday, to revive the institute.
Nirdesh is an autonomous body under the Department of Defence Production of the Union Ministry of Defence.
The fate of the project is hanging in balance as the Union Finance Ministry has returned a draft of the Union Cabinet note to the Defence Ministry which has sought Rs.600 crore for setting up the project. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, who wanted the project to take off at the earliest, got approval from different ministries.
However, the Finance Ministry objected to the project for various reasons.
Former Defence Minister A.K. Antony laid the foundation stone for the ambitious Rs.600-crore project in 2011 aimed at achieving “self-reliance in the strategic areas of research and development, leading to indigenous construction of warships and submarines.” However, its functioning has now been confined to imparting training on shipbuilding and other corporate social responsibility activities.
The officials said that Nirdesh had a proposal to set up a Centralised Shipbuilding Data Centre, which would become a hub of shipbuilding information, to be shared by all shipyards, the Navy, the Coast Guard and the DRDO.
Nirdesh, registered as a society, was supported by the Coast Guard, the Indian Navy, Mazagon Dock Limited, Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Goa Shipyard Limited and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Limited, they said.