THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will inaugurate Asia’s biggest naval academy in Ezhimala in northern Kerala next month and the training of cadets for B.Tech course will commence on June 27.
“Once fully functional, the academy will be an engineering college with state-of-the-art facilities with accreditation from the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi will award the degree,” Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Naval Command (Training Command) Vice-Adm. Sunil K. Damle said.
“At present, 257 foreign officers from 17 friendly countries were undergoing training. Some 750 trainees, including foreign cadets, would train at the academy at any given time”.
Ezhimala, which is 286 m above sea level, was the capital of the ancient Mooshika kings and is considered to be an ancient historical site consisting of a conspicuous, isolated cluster of hills, forming a promontory, 38 km north of the Kannur town.
A flourishing seaport and center of trade in ancient Kerala, it was one of the major battlefields of the Chola-Chera war of the 11th century.
Naval ship INS Zamorin was commissioned here in 2005 marking the Phase I of the 5 billion-rupee Naval Academy, foundation stone of which was laid by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on Jan. 27, 1987, and the passing-out parade of the first batch of 114 trainees, including two personnel from the Coast Guard, was held recently.
In a related development, Defense Minister AK Antony laid the foundation stone for the product support center of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in Kochi last week.
Based at the Kinfra Hi-Tech Park in Kalamassery, the BEL unit will provide product support for the Indian Navy, National Physical & Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) of DRDO.
BEL and NPOL have been collaborating in the field of underwater systems for the past three decades, developing ship and submarine sonars. “Establishing a support center at Kochi by BEL will further facilitate achieving the ambitious targets for the indigenous sonar programs.
The navy is planning to build an indigenous aircraft carrier at the Cochin Shipyard by 2014 and BEL proposes to supply radars, communication systems, electronic warfare systems, fire control systems and combat management systems for the project. The BEL unit here will support installation, commissioning and product development.
Set up in Bangalore in 1954, BEL is India’s foremost defense electronics company with a multi-product, multi-technology and multiunit portfolio that boasts of over 350 products in the areas of military communications, radars, naval systems, telecom and broadcast, electronic warfare, tank electronics, electro optics, professional electronic components and solar photovoltaic systems.
