Thiruvananthapuram: The inauguration of the Vizhinjam port Friday presented a rare bonhomie between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as the two showered praises on the Adani Group, the private concessionaire in charge of the port project.
PM Modi praised the Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government for embracing public private partnership and lauding Adani Group’s work despite coming from a communist ideology.
“The port minister, when he made the welcome speech, said Adani was a partner to the State government in the project. Significantly, it’s coming from a communist government minister,” the Prime Minister said.
“To achieve heights in the maritime sector, we need to give prominence to the private sector. There have been crores of rupees of investment in the country through the Public, Private, and Partnership model. This partnership is not only for upgrading our port standards, but also for maintenance and infrastructure for the future. The participation of the private sector increases efficiency,” Modi said.
Adani, he said, will have to hear complaints from the people of Gujarat for completing such a big project in Kerala even though the businessman has been working in Gujarat for 30 years.
The PM did not lose the opportunity to hit out at the Congress. “Our Chief Minister, you are a strong pillar of the INDIA bloc. Shashi Tharoor is also sitting here. Today’s event will ruin the sleep of several people,” the Prime Minister said in Hindi.
However, the translator didn’t translate this portion of the speech into Malayalam after which the Prime Minister smiled and said,“He could not (translate the part).. But the message has been sent to where it should.”
The mega port, located 16 km away from Thiruvananthapuram, is expected to boost investments and exports in Kerala. Located just 10 nautical miles away from the international shipping route, the country’s first deep water container transshipment port is expected to accommodate 1 million TEUs, adding 6.2 million TEUs (a unit of measurement used to determine cargo capacity for container ships and terminals) after the completion of the second and third phase.
The project began in 2016, completed the first phase and began operation on 3 December, 2024, after which it has handled over 280 vessels and 6 lakh TEUs, including mega vessels like MSC Turkiye, one of the largest ships in the world.
The port is being built under a Public Private Partnership model (PPP) by the Adani Group with a majority stake from the Kerala government as it’s funding Rs 5,370.86 crore of the total Rs 8,686 crore. While Adani Ports’ share is Rs 2,497 crore, the central government is pitching with Rs 818 crore in the form of viability gap funding.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan praised the Adani group for completing the project. “On behalf of the people of Kerala, I once again express our sincere gratitude to the Honourable Prime Minister for visiting our State to dedicate this landmark project to the nation. I also extend my congratulations to the Adani Group for executing this mission with excellence,” he said.
The ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), has been going all out in attracting private investments. Kerala had introduced an industrial policy in 2023 relaxing many regulations to attract investors. It also held a global investment summit in February. The two-day event saw Expressions of Interest (EoIs) worth Rs 1,52,905 crore, which include an investment of Rs 30,000 crore from the Adani Group.
At that time, Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor had praised the LDF government’s reforms, inviting criticism from his own party’s members in Kerala.
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‘Project on LDF govt’s 10th year’
“And we have achieved this too,” Pinarayi Vijayan said soon after the official inauguration of the much-delayed ambitious Vizhinjam port. He said the project was envisaged during the 1996-LDF government and faced many hurdles before its completion.
“A contract was made in 2015, but it faced many criticisms. Even with all the criticism, we stood up to materialize the project without political division. After coming to power in 2016, we made an extensive effort to make this (the project) happen,” he said.
A promotional video of the port, which was featured at the event, called the port as Kerala’s dream project, as the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government entered its 10th year in the Assembly.
A long pending dream, the initial work on the project was started by the Congress government under K. Karunakaran in 1991. Later, the LDF’s E.K. Nayanar government too moved ahead with the port. But the project never took off due to multiple reasons, including protests by local fishermen. In 2014, it saw a revival under the Congress’s Oommen Chandy government and the foundation stone of the project was laid in the following year.
On Friday, opposition leader V.D. Satheesan was missing from the event even as Lok Sabha MPs Shashi Tharoor (Thiruvananthapuram) and Adoor Prakash (Attingal) represented the Congress. BJP state chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar found a seat in the front row along with Modi, Vijayan, Governor Rajendra Arlekar, Union Ministers Suresh Gopi and George Kurian, and the Lok Sabha MPs. The Kerala government had earlier said Chandrasekhar was added to the invitation list by the Prime MInister’s Office.
Satheesan opted out as he said the Kerala government only sent him a letter regarding the event on Tuesday, after media highlighted his exclusion from the event. Satheesan said he didn’t consider the letter an official invitation.
Though absent, Satheesan on Friday morning shared a video of late chief minister Oommen Chandy’s speech about the port in the Kerala Assembly from 2015 on social media. Chandy stated that Vizhinjam was a dream project of Kerala, which the state was trying to materialize since 1991.
“Oommen Chandy is no more. He lives on in people’s memory as a history that can’t be erased. Those who want to erase and rewrite history are afraid of even his memory,” Satheesan said, while wishing his best to the port.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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