The Indian Coast Guard (ICG), that manages the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Chennai corroborated Parrikar when it too announced on Thursday that so far, "nil survivors or debris (of the aircraft) were found."
In what has turned out to be the largest ever Search and Rescue (SAR) operations undertaken by India, efforts to trace the missing Indian Air Force (IAF) transport aircraft AN-32 with 29 on board, has yielded no positive result.
As rescuers, on 13 ships and four choppers continued to scout the vast area in the Bay of Bengal where the ill-fated aircraft is believed to have ditched and chased every glimmer of lead, defence minister Manohar Parrikar told Parliament that "three oil slicks, five transmission intercepts and twenty two floating objects" that were found, upon being investigated, have not turned out to be from the missing AN-32. With that, little hopes little hopes that arose in the last two days on spotting of some leads, too, dashed.
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG), that manages the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Chennai corroborated Parrikar when it too announced on Thursday that so far, "nil survivors or debris (of the aircraft) were found."
"11 air sorties, three each by the coast guard and navy and five by the IAF, are planned on Thursday, for sea-air coordinated search," said an ICG official at the headquarters here.
Parrikar, who made a suo-motu statement on the issue in Lok Sabha Thursday said that the "search efforts are focussed on the surface as well as the underwater domain to look for survivors and debris." "The search for the missing plane is being supplemented by the use of indigenous satellites such as CARTOSAT 2A and 2B which have the ability to cover areas of the swath of 27x27 km and have a resolution of 0.8 metres." An Indian Navy submarine is also currently undertaking search in the designated area, he said.
"Several inputs and leads on floating objects and possible transmissions have been picked up from satellite imagery and air surveillance efforts. Each of these has been thoroughly investigated by ships and aircraft. However, no concrete evidence with respect to AN-32 has emerged, so far," he added.
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