Is India's coast secure enough to prevent another 26/11? To prevent another Mumbai-type attack, coastal police stations are being set up, additional radar stations along the coastline have been commissioned, over 200 boats and vessels will be acquired and 60 jetties are to be set up to add muscle to our coastal security.

NEW DELHI: India on Tuesday launched its largest-ever coastal defence exercise “Sea Vigil”, with all maritime stakeholders led by the Navy swinging into action along the country’s entire 7,517-km coastline including island territories and the two million sq km Exclusive Economic Zone , in a massive endeavor that comes a decade after the deadly 26/11 terror strikes in Mumbai.“The scale of the exercise is unprecedented in terms of the geographical extent, the number of stakeholder involved, the number of units participating and in terms of the objectives to be met. All the central ministries and agencies concerned as well as nine coastal states and four union territories have pitched in. Fishing and coastal communities are also involved,” said Navy deputy chief Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar The sheer scale of the 36-hour high voltage exercise, which will also witness some “rogue boats” trying to “penetrate” the multi-layered security grid, can be gauged from the fact that just the Navy and Coast Guard alone have deployed 139 ships and 35 aircraft, including Dorniers, helicopters and drones, apart from scores of patrol boats from the customs, coastal police forces, CISF and the like.“The Sea Vigil exercise aims to comprehensively and holistically validate the efficacy of the measures taken for coastal defence since 26/11. It will also be a build-up towards the major 'Tropex' (theatre-level readiness operational exercise), which the Navy conducts every two years,” said another officer.“Sea Vigil, which will also involve a comprehensive operational, technical and administrative audit, will provide a realistic assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. It will test the entire coastal security mechanism of the entire country in one go. This will certainly help further strengthen our overall national security,” he added.The 26/11 carnage in Mumbai in 2008 had in particular exposed the lack of “critical connectivity'' between intelligence agencies and security agencies. Though there were some intelligence inputs about fishing vessel Kuber trying to infiltrate through the sea route at that time, it had slipped through the cracks to allow Ajmal Kasab and nine other terrorists to reach Mumbai and unleash mayhem.Since then, several steps have been taken to bolster coastal security and boost greater operational and intelligence cooperation, though much more needs to be done. Under Phase-I of the Coastal Surveillance Network (CSN), for instance, 36 radar stations with static radars and electro-optic sensors on the mainland as well as six in Lakshadweep and Minicoy and four in Andaman and Nicobar have become operational at a cost of over Rs 600 crore after several delays.The Phase-II, which will cost over Rs 800 crore, involves setting up 38 more radar stations with static radars and electro-optic sensors, four mobile surveillance stations and integration of VTMS (vessel traffic management systems) sites in the Gulfs of Kutch and Khambat.Apart from setting up joint operations centres and other such measures, the Navy has also set up the Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) at Gurgaon, which takes feeds and inputs from multiple sources ranging from coastal radars to satellites and then fuses, correlates and analyses them to assess threats in the Indian Ocean Region.