Sethusamudram project ¡ª Trials and travails

Joining the Ivy league of the world’s best known maritime waterways (Panama Canal, Suez Canal, Malacca Strait), albeit not of their size or strategic significance, will soon be the Sethusamudram canal, across the Palk Straits between India and Sri Lanka, linking the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar, through Rameswaram island.

Currently, ships traversing between India’s east coast and west coast are obliged to circumnavigate Sri Lanka due to a sandstone reef, termed Adam’s Bridge (a chain of islets and shallows linking India with Sri Lanka) located southeast of Rameswaram, close to Pamban, which connects the Talaimannar coast of Sri Lanka. The depth of the sea here being only about 3 meters restricts ships to navigate.

The Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP) constitutes the country’s first effort to dredge a navigation channel that is located 30-40 km offshore. It is also the longest sea bed dredging project ever to be taken up by India.

With two legs – one in the Adam’s Bridge, where the average depth is only about 3 meters, and the other leg in the Palk Strait where the depth averages 6-8 meters – the present Sethusamudram channel is over 20 km from the Shingle Island off the Gulf of Mannar near Dhanushkodi, running parallel to the India-Sri Lanka Medial Line, at a minimum distance of 3 km within India’s own territorial waters.

The length of the proposed channel is expected to be 167.57 km, with its southern leg at Adam’s Bridge area 34.92 km long, the northern leg in Palk Strait 54.33 km long and the intervening Palk Bay stretches in the central portion 78.32 km long.

While the northern and southern legs, involving the shallow sea bed of the Palk Bay and Adam’s Bridge, will need to be dredged for a depth of 12 meter, the central leg requires no dredging. The SSCP, when completed, will be 167 km long, 12 meters deep and 300 meters wide at the bottom, and would enable ships to navigate through the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay, and enter the Bay of Bengal directly.