Def Min working on Rs 1,000 crore proposal for coastal radars

Under CSN, the Defence Ministry along with several other stakeholders is planning to set up a chain of static radars along the coastal areas to keep an eye on movement of suspicious ships.

"We are working on a Rs 1,000 crore proposal to set up 38 additional radars as part of the phase II of CSN along the coastline," highly-placed Defence Ministry sources said here.

A proposal in this regard would be ready in "next few days" and would be put up for approval of Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh very soon, they said.

Under CSN, Defence Minister A K Antony had recently inaugurated coastal radars in Gujarat and Maharashtra and another one has also started functioning in Kochi in Kerala.

The Ministry is hopeful that phase-I of CSN would be completed by March next year and immediately after that, work on the phase II of the programme will be initiated.

Antony had said that with CSN, the Ministry aims to achieve near-gap-free electronic surveillance along the coastal areas.

After the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, the government has taken several measures to strengthen Coast Guard including doubling the maritime agency's manpower and assets.