TN Minister Asks Centre To Hand Over Chennai Fishing Harbour To The State

A memorandum has been submitted on Monday (November 12) to Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh by Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar, urging the Centre to hand over the day-to-day management of the Chennai fishing harbour to the Government of Tamil Nadu. He also requested the Union minister to hand over the pending allocations made for Tamil Nadu under various schemes, reports The New Indian Express.

The minister, in his memorandum, stated that the harbour was constructed with a 100 per cent grant from the Union Ministry of Agriculture and became operational in 1984. The management of the Chennai fishing harbour was passed on to the Board of Trustees of the Port of Chennai following the orders of the Union Ministry of Agriculture on 19 February 1985.

The Department of Fisheries of the Tamil Nadu government, meanwhile, carried out infrastructural work which included renovating and upgrading the harbour over a period. The department recently carried out a significant infrastructural development in the harbour, which cost an estimated Rs 9,606.39 lakh.

TN has been asking the Centre to hand over the harbour since 2013, and a resolution was passed on 27 November 2015, to transfer the management and maintenance of the harbour to the Fisheries department. The Centre’s queries were addressed before they accepted the proposal.

The minister had predicted a requirement of Rs 1,000 crore under the FIDF out of which project reports for five main projects costing an estimated Rs 636 crore had been submitted, while proposals for projects for the remaining Rs 364 crore was being prepared and would be sent to the Centre at the earliest. The release of the balance funds under schemes sponsored by the Centre is a significant issue raised by the minister.