The Inland Vessels Bill, 2021
The Inland Vessels Bill, 2021
Recently, the Inland Vessels Bill, 2021 has been introduced by the government in the Lower House of Parliament (Lok Sabha).
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’ to be issued under the proposed law will be valid in all states and union territories, so there will be no need for separate permission from the states for this.
- The Bill also provides for creating a central data base for recording vessel, vessel registration and crew details, on an electronic portal.
- Under the Bill, it will be mandatory for all mechanically propelled ships to register. And all non-mechanically propelled vessels also have to be registered at district, taluk or panchayat or village level.
Inland Water Transport-IWT
- It should be noted that the length of navigable waterways in India is about 14,500 km, and it includes rivers, canals, backwaters or backwaters, creeks etc.
- Inland Water Transport (IWT) is a fuel-efficient and environment-friendly mode of transport.
- As per the National Waterways Act 2016, 111 waterways have been declared as National Waterways (NW).
- The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister has given its approval for implementation of the Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP) for capacity augmentation of navigation on National Waterway-1 (NW-1) at a cost of Rs 5369.18 crore with the technical assistance and investment support of the World Bank.
Source: PIB
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