All fishing boats, big ships being checked.
A special three-day joint exercise for coastal security was launched on Tuesday to thwart any possible attempt by Pakistan-based terrorist organisations to disturb general elections in the country.
According to highly-placed sources in security agencies, the exercise is aimed at increasing co-ordination among the agencies involved in coastal security. The exercise involves checking of all incoming crafts - from coastal fishing boats to big vessels.
"We check every vessel to ensure that the returning trawlers and dhows that had gone to the sea for fishing or transportation of cargo are genuine ones and not involved in any anti-national activities. We, however, do not check outgoing vessels as we have all information about them when they are leaving the state shore," a top marine official said.
The exercise involving the coast guard, water wing of the BSF, the police, customs and CISF is going on in the Gulf of Kutch where a large number of vessels regularly ply. On the high sea, where international maritime border is situated, the passing ships are being checked by the coast guard vessels. All information related to the ships, their crew and cargo is sought through radio telephony and the vessel is boarded for physical check only in the case of suspicion. The sources said that daily 15 to 20 ships coming from the Middle East and Europe are thus being indirectly checked.
The sources said that checking of coastal boats is being done by various marine agencies in the area. For example, the responsible agency is the marine police at Mandvi while there are multiple agencies in Jakhau area.
Taking the coastal security seriously after the recent visit of a top team from Gandhinagar, headed by the state chief secretary, state fisheries commissioner A M Solanki specially visited Jakhau on Wednesday to know about the problems of fishermen who come from all parts of the state during the fishing season, and at the same time discuss measures for tightening coastal security.
The district magistrate, RR Varsani, also held a special meeting with senior officials of the army, air force, coast guard and other agencies on Wednesday. "It was mainly an election-related meeting with senior officials of various security agencies, where election observers were also present. The idea was to acquaint ourselves of the border scenario," he said. He said five more boats had been sanctioned for patrolling in Jakhau and adjoining area so that the state's long coast in this border district remained guarded.
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