The entire maritime community and particularly the Indian Ports Association (IPA) family grieves at the untimely demise of Dr A Janardhana Rao, Managing Director, IPA who was battling with Covid-19. Indian Ports Association (IPA) is an apex body of the Major Ports of India that acts as a Think-Tank to the Ministry of Shipping, Government of India and is rightly hailed as the Centre of Excellence (CoE) helping the Major Ports to achieve eminence in their operations and management, thus contributing to the growth of the economy of the ports and the country at large.
Dr. A Janardhana Rao was a doyen in the ports & maritime sector, under his leadership the sector saw many progressive changes. A dynamic administrator and financial expert, he was well versed in all port activities and part of several policy changes for the growth of the sector, particularly to make the port sector more vibrant. His contribution for the development of major and minor ports sector has been remarkable. He was instrumental in several key initiatives like Port Community System PCS 1x, developed by Portall Infosystems in collaboration with Indian Port Authority. This is a Cloud-based open platform that enables intelligent, easy, efficient and secure exchange of information between public and private stakeholders.
Our recent interaction with Dr. A Janardhana Rao was in April, on our online platform “Digital Dialogues,” where he elaborated on several aspects like the Major Port Authorities Act 2021, capacity expansion plans for major ports, the ERP Systems project to digitise ports ecosystem, rehaul of land policy by the Ministry of Shipping to ensure optimum utilization of land parcels available with major ports, development of transshipment hub in India and development of multimodal logistics.
We at Maritime Gateway express our heart-felt condolences on this great loss to the society, industry and humanity. The vacuum created in our hearts and the industry by his sudden demise will ever remain. May God bless his family with immense strength to withstand this calamity in their life.
A great loss for the maritime fraternity. May his soul rest in peace.
