Coastal security exercise held off Kerala coast

Indian Navy and other agencies conducted a security exercise off the coast of Kerala this week to assess the preparedness in dealing with an asymmetric threat emanating from the sea.
Attack and security groups were formed for the three- day exercise dubbed as 'Sagar Kavach.'
Over a 100 ships and patrol crafts of the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, Coastal police and other coastal security agencies participated in the exercise held off the coast of Kerala, Mahe and Lakshadweep and Minicoy (L&M) Islands from April 25 and undertook round-the-clock patrolling of the seas.
Extensive aerial surveillance of the adjoining seas was also mounted by aircrafts of the Coastal security group including unmanned aerial platforms to detect ships and vessels of the attack group, Navy said in a release here.

Vice Admiral AR Karve, Flag Officer Commanding in Chief, Southern Naval Command who is also the Commander in Chief, Coastal Defence, undertook a review of the progress of exercise, with all the concerned stakeholders on April 26 at the Joint Operations Centre (JOC), Kochi.
Representatives of participating agencies such as Coast Guard, Coastal Police, Cochin Port, Fisheries Department, Marine Enforcement Wing (MEW) and Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) attended the review and provided feedback on important coastal security measures pertaining to their charter.

Keeping the monsoons in mind and stressing on the importance of saving precious lives in the eventuality of an incident at sea, all agencies were also briefed on the mechanism for search and rescue off Kerala and Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands including use of maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) Toll-Free number 1554.

Sagar Kavach is a bi-annual exercise undertaken to evaluate interoperability and coordination between integrated maritime security agencies, which were set up to strengthen coastal security as a fallout of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, in intelligence gathering, surveillance as well as anti-terrorism and counter insurgency.
The entire exercise was conducted by the Coast Guard and was monitored at the JOC,Naval base, Kochi.