The government has appointed Vice Admiral (retd) G. Ashok Kumar as India’s first National Maritime Security Coordinator (NMSC) with a mandate to ensure cohesion among various key stakeholders with an overall objective to strengthen the country’s maritime security.

Vice Admiral Kumar retired from service in July 2021. He is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Pune and was commissioned in the Navy’s Executive Branch in 1982. He held several important staff and command assignments in his nearly four-decade long career. After having completed his specialisation in navigation and direction in Kochi in 1989, he served as the navigating officer of Indian Naval Ships Beas, Nilgiri, Ranvir and Vikrant. His other sea tenures include Commanding Officer of INS Kulish and Ranvir, and Executive Officer onboard INS Brahmaputra.

The need for the post of NMSC

• The thought of having the country’s top maritime coordinator came up by the Group of Ministers formed after the Kargil conflict of 1999. 

• The government has been focusing on ensuring cooperation among all maritime stakeholders to enhance India’s maritime security and surveillance in view of multiple security challenges.

• Since the Mumbai terror attack, the government has taken a string of security measures including putting in place layered maritime surveillance to bolster coastal and maritime security.

• India has a coastline of around 7,500-kilometres.

• Last year, the Cabinet Committee on Security had cleared the proposal for the creation of the post.

• The NMSC works in coordination with the National Security Council Secretariat headed by NSA Ajit Doval.

• The NMSC is tasked to coordinate among the Indian Navy, the Coast Guard, security agencies involved in coastal and maritime security and coastal states and Union Territories.

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