Union Cabinet approves Inland vessel bill to be presented in Parliament

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday has approved the Inland vessel bill which looks at streamlining vessels running on inland waterways in the country.

The bill will now be presented in the Parliament.

“The Cabinet has approved the Inland vessel bill which will streamline and regulate inland vessels,” Union minister for ports, shipping and waterways Mansukh Mandaviya said during a press briefing.


A total of 4,000 kilometres of inland waterways are operational. “The Cabinet has approved the Inland vessel bill to ensure the safety, security, of vessels running on waterways, besides seeing that their registration is done smoothly,” Mandaviya added.

The Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the proposal of ministry of earth sciences (MoES) on Deep Ocean Mission, with a view to explore deep ocean for resources and develop deep sea technologies for sustainable use of ocean resources.

The estimated cost of the mission will be Rs. 4077 crore for a period of five years to be implemented in a phase-wise manner.

The estimated cost for the first phase for the 3 years (2021-2024) would be Rs.2823.4 crore.

The deep ocean mission will be a mission mode project to support the Blue Economy Initiatives of the government, it said in a statement.

MoES will be the nodal ministry implementing this multi-institutional mission.

The mission will include development of technologies for deep sea mining, and manned submersible, development of ocean climate change advisory services, technological innovations for exploration and conservation of deep-sea biodiversity, deep ocean survey and exploration, energy and freshwater from the ocean, and advanced marine station for ocean biology.