After being in active service for 30 years and spending another year-and-a-half inside the Naval Dockyard, the ill-fated Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vindhyagiri will be finally decommissioned on May 30 by the Western Naval Command in a formal ceremony.
“Although preparations for the decommissioning ceremony were underway for the last few days, the administrative order was issued only on Monday,” informed a naval officer with the Western Naval Command.
The naval authorities want the decommissioning ceremony to be a low-key affair due to obvious reasons.
Once the official ceremony is held, the ship will be taken to high seas to be used as a “target” to check the precision, as well as efficiency of the naval systems and weaponry. The dates for this are yet to be finalised.
On May 8, the Bombay high court had permitted the Navy to destroy the ship after an application was filed seeking permission on the grounds that ammunition was still inside the ship.
The application stated, “The dockyard where INS Vindhyagiri is presently grounded is occupied by several other naval warships. There are other merchant vessels that also ply into the city port, which is in the same vicinity. Keeping such ammunition is unsafe and may cause risk to the other ships.” The application further added that it is very dangerous to remove the ammunition from the warship without risking an explosion.
On January 30, 2011, the warship had collided with MV Nordlake near Sunk Rock lighthouse. The same evening a major fire had broken out and it took over 15 hours to control it. On January 31, it sank due to water filling its chambers.
After the collision, senior Naval officers were deliberating on refitting the ship, but the cost of the repairs made the job unviable. The warship was commissioned on July 8, 1981.
In the last fortnight, two more ships were decommissioned in the Western Naval Command — INS Ratnagiri and INS Krishna.