VISAKHAPATNAM: The latest edition of Indian Navy’s multilateral exercise MILAN-2022 will witness participation of 40 countries. Scheduled to commence from Friday, the maritime exercise, being hosted in Visakhapatnam for the first time, was earlier supposed to take place in 2020, but was deferred due to the Covid pandemic.
While 13 countries have sent their warships, others are sending their highest-level delegations. Warships of Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, South Korea, Bangladesh, Indonesia US, Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Seychelles and France will take part in the multi-nation exercise.
MIL AN will begin with a pre-launch event, ‘ice-breaker’, to be held at Eastern Naval Command-Sailors’ Institute lawns. The event will provide an opportunity to officers of participating navies to interact with each other. The MILAN village at Sailors Institute houses handicraft and food stalls from reputed hotels featuring international and Indian cuisines to give all participants a fleeting glimpse of India during the exercise. It is being conducted over a duration of nine days in two phases with the harbour phase scheduled from February 25 to 28 and sea phase from March 1 to 4.
The MIL AN village also has curio/souvenir shops, for the visitors to take back memorabilia. There will be daily cultural performances to facilitate a healthy cultural exchange. The city parade is one of the major highlights of MILAN - 2022 and will be conducted on Feb 27 on the R K Beach road. Contingents from the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, State police, Sea Cadet Corps, Naval Cadet Corps, schools from the city and friendly countries will participate in the parade. Cultural programme with tattoo ceremony by Indian Naval Band, hornpipe dance by cadets from Sea Cadet Corps and performance by artists/ schoolchildren, will add colour to the event. The RK Beach Road has been decked up for the spectacular show. Meanwhile, the Indian Navy welcomed naval ships of Vietnam, Sri Lanka and France which arrived here on Thursday.