MUMBAI, November 28: The INS Vikrant will be open to the public over the weekend to celebrate Navy Week. At a press meet, Vice Admiral Avnish Rai Tandon, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief Western Naval Command (FOC-in-C) stressed the need for a strong naval force in view of India's dependence on oil imports and the ongoing low intensity conflict on the border.``The requirement for a strong naval force to deter anybody from carrying out a misadventure is increasing by the day,'' he said. A misadventure in this case would probably be an oil blockade or a strike against our coastline by a hostile power. ``We have very vast maritime interests,'' he said. India not only had a vast 7500-mile coastline to protect but also her offshore oil platforms, minor ports and huge refineries being set up by industrial houses in Gujrat, he said, at his annual press conference on the eve of the Navy Week celebrations.Since annual oil consumption in India had gone up to 78 million tonnes, far outstripping indigenous production of around 30 million tonnes, more oil had to be imported through the sea.The Indian Ocean and its vicinity had already become vital, he hinted. ``The US Navy constituted its Fifth Fleet in the Gulf a few years ago. The visits of French, US and British ships in the region have only increased.''The low-intensity conflict the country is involved in on land is likely to increase in the sea borders too, he said. The navy is also doing a fair share of counter-insurgency operations. After March 1993 bomb blasts, it has been maintaining a cordon around the country's western and southern coastline in joint operations with police, customs and the coast guard. The first week of December commemorates the highly successful raid on Karachi harbour by naval missile boats on December 4 during the 1971 Indo-Pak war.The theme of this year's navy week is `self-reliance through indigenisation'. Reiterating that the navy was at the forefront of inducting and encouraging indigenous technology, the C-in-C said the navy had already prepared designs of the indigenous aircraft carrier. The Air Defense Ship (ADS), as the carrier is called, will be built at Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL) and completed in around 8 years.
