India's first aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, decommissioned by the Navy over a decade ago, is to be put to commercial use like restaurants and convention centres. INS Vikrant, now only a museum, is to have certain value additions to make it financially viable. Presently, the museum is open to public only for ten days in a year during the Navy Week in December. During the rest of the year it does not generate any revenue.

Maharashtra Urban Infrastructure Development Company which will oversee the project on behalf of the state government has issued a notice for Request For Qualification, "for selection of a private developer for converting Vikrant as a commercially viable maritime museum". The tender notice said, "The ship is proposed to be grouted at Oyster Rock- at Colaba in Mumbai [Images] and operated as a commercially viable maritime museum on a Public-Private-Partnership basis by allowing permissible commercial activities on board".

The MUIDC website says the possible revenue streams to make the project commercially viable may include construction of helipad for helicopter rides, small shops, cafes, hoardings on the ship and convention halls among others.

The warship, currently berthed at the Naval Dockyard at Colaba, is managed by the Vikrant Museum Trust through an apex committee of Navy and Maharashtra government. The MUIDC website states that IIT-Chennai has already been commissioned to do a technical study for jetty/platform construction and concept designing.

CRISIL, which has been appointed as consultant to the project, has said that the sanctity of the warship should be maintained while allowing commercial activities on it. INS Vikrant was India's first aircraft carrier and played a key role during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. It was India's only carrier for over 20 years, but was effectively out of service by early 1990s and decommissioned in January 1997.

In November 1998, Maharashtra proposed the conversion of Vikrant into a museum and the Ministry of Defence agreed and extensively refurbished it. The ship, rechristened as Indian Museum Ship Vikrant has been anchored in Naval Dockyard, Mumbai for the last ten years. The museum is now a microcosm of the entire Navy but is open to public only for a few days. In a new avatar, it may be thrown open to visitors all through the year.

Image: A ferry sails past Indian Museum Ship-Vikrant in Mumbai.

Photograph: Reuters/ Arko Datta