Cabinet Approves Rs 76,000-Crore All-Weather Vadhavan Port In Maharashtra

The Union Cabinet met for the first time in the third tenure of the Narendra Modi government and approved the construction of an all-weather greenfield deep draft port at Vadhavan near Dahanu, nearly 110 km from Mumbai, in Maharashtra on Wednesday, with a budget of Rs 76,000 crore.

The budget includes the project's land acquisition costs. Upon completion, Vadhavan Port is poised to rank among the top ten ports globally.

A 'deep-draft' describes a port that can accommodate large vessels such as big cargo ships.

The port will be developed by Vadhavan Port Project Ltd.—a joint venture between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority Ltd., which will hold a 74% stake, and Maharashtra Maritime Board, which will hold the remainder—in two phases under the landlord model, according to government policy.

This will include the development of core infrastructure, terminals and other commercial infrastructure in a public-private partnership mode. The cabinet also approved establishing road connectivity between the port and national highways by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways and rail linkage to the existing rail network and the upcoming dedicated rail freight corridor by the Ministry of Railways.

The project, aligned with the PM Gati Shakti programme, is expected to boost economic activity, generating direct and indirect employment opportunities for around 12 lakh individuals.

The port will comprise nine container terminals, each 1,000 metres long, four multipurpose berths, including the coastal berth, four liquid cargo berths, a Ro-Ro berth, and a coast guard berth. The project involves the reclamation of 1,448 hectares of area in the sea and the construction of 10.14 km of offshore breakwater and container/cargo storage areas. The project will create a cumulative capacity of 298 million metric tonnes per annum, including around 23.2 million TEUs of container handling capacity.

The capacity of Indian ports currently stands at 2,604.99 mtpa.

The capacities created will also aid trade flow through the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor and the International North-South Transportation Corridor. The world-class maritime terminal facilities promote public-private partnerships and leverage efficiencies and modern technologies to create state-of-the-art terminals capable of handling mainline megavessels plying on international shipping lines between the Far East, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, a statement said.

Vadhavan port is declared the 13th major port as part of the Indian government's Sagarmala initiative, which aims to make Indian ports major contributors to the country’s GDP. The proposed site is said to have a draft of over 18 metres in depth.

An attempt to construct a port at Vadhavan was made in 1997 by an Australian company. However, the Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority (DTEPA) had refused clearance.

Over the last decade, the port has faced huge protests for environmental-related issues. The protesters believed that the port would have caused a loss of livelihood for the fishing community; the construction of the port in the sea would displace water and cause erosion. The water would have entered the coastal belt villages and the loss of biodiversity in the fishing golden belt of the Arabian Ocean was one of the reasons for the opposition.

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) and Maharashtra Maritime Board signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on June 5, 2015, for the development of Vadhavan Port. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) issued a notification on April 30, 2020, which mentioned the ports in the non-industrial operation category.

Following this, the Ministry of Environment and Forest & Climate Change (MoEF & CC) issued a notification stating that the activity of the port does not fall under the red category. These developments cleared the way for the construction of the port at Vadhavan. JNPA applied to the Dahanu Taluka Environmental Protection Authority (DTEPA) for permission and obtained no objections to the construction of the port at Vadhavan.