Coastal Security Scheme

The Coastal Security Scheme (CSS) is a centrally sponsored scheme administered by India's Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to build the policing capacity of coastal states and union territories in the territorial waters extending up to the limit of state jurisdiction. Its origin lies in the post-Kargil security review and the recommendations of the Group of Ministers report of 2001, which identified gaps in the surveillance of India's 7,516-kilometre coastline. Phase-I was launched in 2005 for an initial five-year period, predicated on the constitutional position that "police" and "public order" are State subjects under Entries 1 and 2 of the State List (Seventh Schedule), making coastal policing a state responsibility for which the Union provides funding, hardware, and coordination. The scheme operates in concert with the broader maritime security architecture that includes the Indian Navy, the Indian Coast Guard (raised under the Coast Guard Act, 1978), and customs authorities.

The procedural core of the scheme is the creation of a dedicated marine police force within each coastal state, equipped to patrol shallow and near-shore waters that larger Coast Guard and Navy vessels cannot effectively cover. Under Phase-I (2005–2011), the MHA sanctioned the establishment of 73 coastal police stations, along with check posts, outposts, and barracks, and provided interceptor boats, jeeps, and motorcycles for mobility on land and water. Funds flow from the Centre to states for the capital cost of infrastructure and craft, while states bear the recurring expenditure on manpower, fuel, and maintenance after an initial subsidy period. Boats are procured centrally to standard specifications and allotted to states, and personnel drawn from the state police are trained in seamanship and navigation, in many cases by the Indian Coast Guard.

Phase-II of the scheme was launched in 2011 following the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, in which ten Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives infiltrated by sea, exposing the fragility of coastal surveillance. Phase-II expanded the network with additional coastal police stations, jetties, marine operational centres, and a larger fleet of interceptor boats of varying tonnage suited to different sea states. A central feature added in this phase was the requirement to register and colour-code fishing vessels, issue biometric identity cards to fishermen, and install transponders on boats above a specified length to enable tracking. The wider ecosystem includes the National Command Control Communication and Intelligence Network (NC3I), the Coastal Surveillance Network of radar chains operated by the Coast Guard, and Sagar Prahari Bal, a Navy force for harbour and anchorage protection. Phase-III has been conceived to further densify the network and modernise craft.

In contemporary practice, the scheme is coordinated through joint operations and exercises. The Indian Coast Guard, designated the authority responsible for coastal security in territorial waters during peacetime, conducts the multi-agency exercise "Sea Vigil" biennially since 2019, and states participate in "Operation Sagar Kavach" drills to test infiltration scenarios. Maritime states including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha, West Bengal, Karnataka, and Goa, along with union territories such as Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, operate the sanctioned police stations. The MHA's annual reports periodically record the cumulative number of operational coastal police stations and boats delivered, and a chain of command links state marine police control rooms to Coast Guard district headquarters.

The Coastal Security Scheme is frequently conflated with the mandate of the Indian Coast Guard, but the two are distinct. The Coast Guard is an armed force of the Union under the Coast Guard Act, 1978, operating across the territorial sea, contiguous zone, and the Exclusive Economic Zone extending to 200 nautical miles, with responsibilities spanning maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and protection of offshore installations. The CSS, by contrast, funds state marine police whose jurisdiction is confined to shallow waters and the immediate shoreline. The scheme also differs from the Sagarmala port-development programme, which is an infrastructure and logistics initiative rather than a security one, and from the Navy's blue-water defence role.

Implementation has drawn sustained scrutiny. Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reports and parliamentary standing committee reviews have repeatedly flagged shortfalls: boats lying non-operational for want of crew or maintenance, coastal police stations sited away from the shore, vacancies in the marine police cadre, and reluctance among land-trained policemen to undertake sea duty. A persistent jurisdictional ambiguity exists at the seam between state marine police, the Coast Guard, and customs, with no single statute consolidating coastal security command. Proposals for a dedicated coastal security legislation and a Maritime Security Coordinator have circulated; the post of National Maritime Security Coordinator was created in 2022 within the National Security Council Secretariat to address inter-agency gaps that the scheme alone could not close.

For the working practitioner—whether a UPSC aspirant preparing GS Paper III internal security, a desk officer at the MHA, or an analyst tracking Indian Ocean security—the Coastal Security Scheme exemplifies the federal challenge of securing a domain where constitutional authority rests with states but threats are transnational. It illustrates how India layers policing, paramilitary, and naval assets across overlapping maritime zones, and why coordination mechanisms such as Sea Vigil and the Maritime Security Coordinator have become as consequential as the hardware the scheme delivers. Understanding its phased evolution, funding mechanics, and audit-identified weaknesses is essential to assessing the credibility of India's coastal defences a decade and a half after the 26/11 attacks reshaped the country's maritime threat perception.