Easier said than done?
A month or two ago, just as the government was getting ready to open the tenders for the removal of the ‘River Princess’, Salgaocar Mining Industries Pvt Ltd (SMIPL) – original owner of the ship that refuses to leave our shores, the M V River Princess – awoke from a long reverie and threw its hat into the ring, inserting advertisements in newspapers offering to remove the ship at no cost.
The Madgavkars then urged the government to accept the SMIPL bid on condition that the company furnish a performance guarantee for the estimated commercial cost of removal. However, all that SMIPL says it is willing to come up with is a bank guarantee of Rs1 crore. That’s peanuts. The earlier bidder – Jaisu Shipping – had put down an earnest money deposit of Rs5 crore.
Since the matter is now before the High Court, which has ordered the government to start removal of the ship within two months and complete the process by the onset of the next monsoon, SMIPL seems to be making itself conspicuous by its absence. On Wednesday, company representatives failed to turn up before the Court to file consent terms.
In the meanwhile, to highlight the utter absurdity of the situation, the River Princess Hatao Manch (RPHM), a Candolim citizens’ coalition, has said it will place a proposal before the High Court to be allowed to remove the stranded ship. On paper, the RPHM’s bid can be taken no less and no more seriously than SMIPL’s.
Neither of the two parties have any experience or expertise in ship salvage or ship breaking. One’s oeuvre is mining, while the other’s is advocacy. Both are as far removed from salvage as chalk from cheese. If SMIPL can be given the contract to remove the ship with a bank guarantee of Rs1 crore, why shouldn’t the contract be given to RPHM? It is as qualified or unqualified as the former. But, more importantly, it has offered to put down a bank guarantee of Rs2 crore…!
Calangute MLA Agnelo Fernandes made a compelling case before the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) that SMIPL’s bid to remove the ship cannot be accepted in its present form. Indeed, if the company takes up the job and, owing to unforeseen complications gives it up halfway, it will lose only a measly Rs1 crore. Can anyone even calculate how much the villagers of Candolim will lose in that event?
Talk is cheap. No one has shown this more effectively than the RPHM and Calangute MLA Agnelo Fernandes, by their dramatic offer to remove the ship themselves, on better terms than SMIPL is offering. SMIPL must put its money where its mouth is. And that can only be a performance guarantee equivalent to the amount it will cost the government to get the ship removed by a competent salvage outfit.
Gill-ty as charged
Union Sports Minister M S Gill may come across as a paragon of virtue compared to the Suresh Kalmadis of the Indian sporting scenario, but he has his flaws too. After young Sushil Kumar’s spectacular win at the World Wrestling Championship, the minister, in his anxiety to get himself photographed with the champion and his gold medal, literally shoved aside Sushil’s legendary guru and coach Satpal, a 1982 Asiad gold medallist and Dronacharya awardee, after wagging a finger at him and asking him to “stay away”.
He did the same earlier to Saina Nehwal’s coach Pullela Gopichand (the only Indian ever to win the All-England badminton championship apart from Prakash Padukone). What is worse, he has neither denied these reports nor apologised.
