Turf war with Navy has cost Coast Guard: CAG

Even though its mandate is to protect the 7,500-km coastline, the Indian Coast Guards is not legally empowered to check thousands of deep-sea fishing boats and trawlers and impound unauthorised vessels surveying the Indian Ocean.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its audit report on the Coast Guard tabled in Parliament on Friday said the vanguards of the Indian coastal defence is also critically short of patrolling boats and aircraft as well as in manpower exposing the coastline’s vulnerability.

A 10-year-old Rs 350crore project to set up 46 radar stations along the coast is also in limbo leading to gaps in detection and tracking of targets.

Till recently, 26/11 to be precise, the ICG was not even a part of the port security system. It also has a long-standing turf war with the Navy duplicating the efforts leaving big gaps in the coastline.

And to make the matter worse, there is simply no way to regulate around three lakh fishing vessels in the unorganised sector, the audit report said.Three years after the audacious Mumbai attack uncovered chinks in the coastal security, undetected arrival of an abandoned Panama-flagged ship, MT Pavit, in Mumbai on Sunday bore testimony to the fact that little progress was made on the ground in the last three years. Legal empowerment of the ICG remained a gray area. Indian maritime zones are governed by two Acts administered by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture.

Though an amendment was made to the Maritime Zones of India Act of 1976, which allows the ICG to enforce its provisions, the Coast Guards cannot impound vessels carrying out unauthorised survey or data collection and can prosecute only with the MEA approval.

Deep-sea fishing, on the other hand, remains completely unregulated. While fishing licences are granted on the basis of a 2004 guideline issued by the agriculture ministry, the maximum what the ICG can do is to inform the department of animal husbandry on the violators.

While a new act on the regulation of deep-sea fishing is in the works since 2009, the MEA and the defence ministry have not been able to find a solution so far on empowering the ICG to seize unauthorised vessels. Till 26/11 happened, the ICG was also not a part of the port security.

Only in February, 2009, the director general shipping instructed ship masters, owners, managers and operators to submit PANS (pre-arrival notification of security) to the Coast Guards.

However, all ships entering the Indian waters are not providing PANS to the Coast Guard, which can do nothing with the omissions simply because till May, 2011, the penal provisions have not been made mandatory by the DG shipping.

If all the pending acquisitions are delivered on time, the Coast Guard would still be 17 per cent short of its vessel strengths and 45 per cent short of its air assets by March 2012.