Ship stuck again,Act on wrecks gets moving

India will soon have a stringent legal regime allowing for different response strategies for marine vessels which are identified as wrecks or pose a hazard to navigation

India will soon have a stringent legal regime allowing for different response strategies for marine vessels which are identified as wrecks or pose a hazard to navigation,marine environment and the surrounding habitat. The legal framework,officials said,will be in continuance of the Nairobi International Convention on Removal of Wrecks,2007,which asks for uniform legal governance towards imposing responsibility and liability for removal of wrecks.

DG Shipping,whose primary role is to implement shipping policy,will soon be preparing the draft Bill for a stringent Act whose provisions will fix accountability and responsibility in the manner a wreck situation should be handled and also propose action under the heads administrative punishment and penalty to be paid by the parties concerned.

The Cabinet approval for one of the oldest proposals came finally after a stranded MV Wisdom took over a month to be towed away from Mumbai. And with MT Pavit beached next to the Mora village in Juhu since Sunday,the authorities confirmed the Bill will need to be expedited.

We have finally got the Cabinet approval on the matter. We will prepare the draft Bill by the end of September, said Satish Agnihotri,DG Shipping.

While MV Wisdom and MT Pavit might just be two recent instances,owners of a Turkish Owners of MV Mirach had in March replied to a District Magistrates Office in Tamil Nadu that Indian Maritime Law does not fix the responsibility of clearing a ship wreckage on owners of the vessel and cited that there are around 2,000 cases of wrecks where vessels have been abandoned across the Indian Coast.

In such situations,the most common legal response is to charge sections of public nuisance on the captain,crew and foreign owners. The proposed Act,which will follow uniform legal governance,will have more teeth in handling situations wherein the insurers are governed by different laws and the owners and the crew belong to different nations.

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