Areas of Maritime Interest

Based on their relative degree of impact on India’s maritime interests, the areas have been categorised as primary and secondary areas of interest:

Primary Areas: India’s primary areas of maritime interest include the following:

  • India’s coastal areas and maritime zones, including coastline, islands, internal sea waters, territorial waters, contiguous zone, EEZ and continental shelf.
  • The Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Andaman Sea, and their littoral regions.
  • The Persian Gulf and its littoral, which is the source of majority of our oil supplies and gas imports, and is home to more than seven million expatriate Indians.
  • The Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea, and their littoral regions.
  • South-West Indian Ocean, including IOR island nations therein and East Coast of Africa littoral regions.
  • The choke points leading to, from and across the Indian Ocean, including the Sixdegree Channel; Eight/ Nine-degree Channels; Straits of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Malacca, Singapore, Sunda and Lombok; the Mozambique Channel, and Cape of Good Hope and their littoral regions.
  • Other areas encompassing our SLOCs, and vital energy and resource interests.

Secondary Areas: India’s secondary areas of maritime interest include the following:-

  • South-East Indian Ocean, including sea routes to the Pacific Ocean and littoral regions in vicinity.

Agencies for Coordinated Patrol

  • State Marine Police: Responsible for patrolling inner layer from coastline upto territorial waters, in coordination with Customs, Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and respective port authorities, as relevant.
  • Indian Coast Guard: Patrols maritime zones of India, and supports State Marine Police within inner layer as required.
  • Indian Navy: Supports Indian Coast Guard within maritime zones as required, and provides presence, including surveillance and patrol, on high seas beyond Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Also undertakes patrolling in Offshore Development Area (ODA), and its Sagar Prahari Bal (SPB) specialised force undertakes patrolling of naval harbours.
  • South and East China Seas, Western Pacific Ocean, and their littoral regions.
  • Southern Indian Ocean Region, including Antarctica.
  • Mediterranean Sea, West Coast of Africa, and their littoral regions.
  • Other areas of national interest based on considerations of Indian diaspora, overseas investments and political relations.

Maritime Terrorism

In recent decades, there been an expansion of this threat from land to sea, and from sea further onto land, aimed at multiple targets located off or near the coast. The targets may include conventional military and soft non-military assets, such as commercial and population centers, industrial centers, ports, ships, tourist centers, iconic structures, and strategic infrastructure like offshore oil production installations and nuclear power plants. Maritime terrorism has evolved from indirect to direct actions from and at sea, and remains active in our maritime security environment.

  • From the Sea: Movement of arms, explosives and terrorists by sea, for subsequently or directly conducting terrorist attacks ashore. India has faced terrorism from the sea in both these ways. In 1993, the seas were used to smuggle explosives for subsequently conducting terrorist attacks in Mumbai. In 2008, this graduated to terrorists emerging from the sea to carry out direct attacks on landing ashore.
  • At Sea: Conducting attacks against ships at sea. These used explosives and small craft in the early 2000s, which has recently graduated to direct weapons and rocket attacks against ships from ashore. There were also attempted hijackings of naval ships in our neighbourhood in 2014. This represents a new genre of threat, wherein radicalized or vulnerable state forces may be commandeered by terrorists to launch semi-conventional attacks against other nations and populace.

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