Eastern Naval Command to strengthen force

By SNV Sudhir

On Board INS Sahyadri, Dec 3, 2013: The Eastern Naval Command (ENC) will induct more ships, aircraft and submarines in the coming days to strengthen the force.  ENC commander in chief, vice admiral, Anil Chopra, addressing newspersons, here on Tuesday, said that with the world’s focus shifting to the eastern side from the Middle East, waters to the east of India have become critical mainly in the wake of many conflicts of territories, maritime and historical in nature.

 He said that ENC’s role includes safeguarding economic assets of the country and establish control on sea, as and when required, to ensure security of sea lanes of communication and protect Indian merchant ships.  

The ENC, he said, is also creating infrastructure and acquiring lands for the airfields from Tuticorin to Visakhapatnam as the eastern region has gained strategic and economic importance it deserves over the last few years.

“ENC has responsibility to safeguard Indian’s maritime interests along a coastline of 2,600 kilometers and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 6 lakh square kilometers. We are also sharing these waters with countries on the eastern Indian Ocean with Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Mynamar and Bangladesh. We are also conducting naval exercises with the neighboring countries and maintaining good diplomatic relations,” he said.

Basing of the Shivalik class stealth frigates, the nuke powered submarine, INS Chakra as an indigenous aircraft carrier, a good number of advance ships, submarines and aircraft assigned to the command are a testimony to the growing stature of the Eastern seaboard, he said.

On nuke powered submarine INS ARihant, vice admiral Anil Chopra, said the submarine was launched two and half years ago and it was put to harbour trails and would shortly go to sea trials.

Responding to a query on threat from ships deployed by China, the vice admiral said China’s economic interests are different from India. “China’s ships are going all over the world. Our ships too go to China for exercises and their ships come to Indian waters. We have also conducted joint naval exercises with the Chinese navy,” he said.

He further said that the Indian navy was capable of acquiring ships and aircraft ingeniously.  “The Indian shipyards are capable of building war ships. All the 46 ships of the Indian navy were in different stages of construction by the Indian shipyards,” he added.

ENC celebrates Navy Day every year on December 4 as it was on this day in 1971 that the missile boats of the Indian Navy carried out a deadly attack on Karachi Harbour during the Indo-Pak War.