Inland Vessels Bill
Recently, the Inland Vessels Bill 2021 has been approved by the Union Cabinet. This bill will replace the ‘Inland Ships Act’ of 1917.
Provisions have been made in this bill to regulate the safety and registration of inland ships.
Key points of the bill:
- In the ‘Inland Vessels Bill’, instead of separate rules made by different states, a provision has been made for a joint law for the whole country.
- The certificate of registration provided in this proposed law will be valid in all the states and union territories, so there will be no need for separate permission from the states for this.
- The Bill provides for the creation of a central data base for recording vessel details, vessel registration details and crew details, on an electronic portal.
- According to the Bill, registration will be made mandatory for all mechanically propelled ships. It will also be mandatory for all non-mechanically propelled vessels to be registered at the district, taluk or panchayat or village level.
Inland Water Transport (IWT)
- It is to be noted that the length of the navigable waterway in India is about 14,500 km, and it includes rivers, canals, backwaters or backwaters, creeks etc.
- Inland Water Transport (IWT) is a fuel-saving and eco-friendly mode of transport.
- A total of 111 waterways have been declared as National Waterways (NW) under the ‘National Waterways Act, 2016’.
- The Government is developing Ganga River as inland waterway Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) is implementing the Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) at an estimated cost of Rs. 5369.18 crore for capacity augmentation of navigation on the Haldia–Varanasi stretch National Waterway-1 (NW-1) with the technical and financial assistance of the World Bank.
Source – The Hindu