India’s Continental Shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone

In April 2025, India quietly claimed about 10,000 square kilometres of new seabed. The claim went to a UN body most people have never heard of.

Indian Coast Guard patrol vessel, tasked with enforcement in India’s maritime zones. Photo: Karthik Nadar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (200 nautical miles from the coast). Map: Pyrophobe, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

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Indian Geography · IndGeo0044

India’s Maritime Zones, Coast Outward

Sovereignty shrinks as distance from the coastline grows

Territorial Sea — 12 nm

Full sovereignty, as if it were land

EEZ — 200 nm

Sole rights to all resources, water + seabed

Extended Shelf — up to 350 nm

Seabed and subsoil rights only, if approved by the CLCS

2.3M km²

India’s EEZ area (18th-largest)

2009

First ECS claim filed with the CLCS

~10,000 km²

Added by the April 2025 revised claim

Why the 2025 claim mattered

India split its Western Arabian Sea submission and deliberately left out the disputed Sir Creek area — trading a bit of seabed for a cleaner, faster path through the CLCS review.

📑 Contents

1Must Know
2Good to Know
3Test Yourself
4Great to Know
5Current Affairs
6Previous Year Questions

✅ Must Know

UNCLOS sets the maritime zones

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), 1982, sets out a country’s maritime zones from its coastline.

Territorial Sea: full sovereignty

India’s Territorial Sea extends 12 nautical miles from the baseline. India has full sovereignty here, as if it were land.

Exclusive Economic Zone: resource rights

India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extends 200 nautical miles from the baseline. Inside it, India has sole rights to explore and use all natural resources, living and non-living, in the water, seabed, and subsoil.

India’s EEZ by the numbers

India’s EEZ covers about 2.3 million square kilometres, making it the world’s 18th-largest.

💡 Good to Know

What the Continental Shelf is

The Continental Shelf is the seabed that extends from a coastline before dropping steeply into the deep ocean floor.

The Extended Continental Shelf option

UNCLOS lets a coastal state claim an “Extended Continental Shelf” (ECS) beyond its 200-nautical-mile EEZ, if it can show the seabed there is a natural extension of its landmass.

How far an ECS claim can reach

An ECS claim can reach out to 350 nautical miles from the baseline, under certain UNCLOS conditions.

What an ECS claim does and doesn’t grant

Unlike the EEZ, an ECS claim grants rights only to the seabed and subsoil resources, such as oil, gas, and minerals. It does not grant rights over the water column above it, such as fishing rights.

The CLCS reviews claims

A UN body called the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) reviews and recommends on these ECS claims.

Test Yourself

🌟 Great to Know

India’s original 2009 claim

India first submitted its Extended Continental Shelf claim to the CLCS in 2009. It covered parts of the Bay of Bengal, the wider Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea, seeking rights over roughly 1.2 million square kilometres of seabed beyond India’s EEZ.

Pakistan’s 2021 objection

In 2021, Pakistan objected to part of the claim in the Western Arabian Sea, citing a roughly 100-nautical-mile overlap near the disputed Sir Creek area.

The 2023 rejection and resubmission option

In 2023, the CLCS rejected India’s claim in the Arabian Sea in its original form, but allowed India to resubmit it with changes.

📰 Current Affairs

April 2025: a revised, expanded claim

Policy In April 2025, India submitted a modified Extended Continental Shelf claim for the Central Arabian Sea, adding nearly 10,000 square kilometres of seabed to its potential maritime area. M. Ravichandran, Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said the claim increased “by an additional 10,000 sq km based on new data.” (Source: Maritime Fairtrade)

Splitting the claim to sidestep Sir Creek

Diplomacy India split its earlier Western Arabian Sea submission into two separate parts for this revision, deliberately excluding the disputed Sir Creek region to avoid escalating the boundary dispute with Pakistan. (Source: Maritime Fairtrade)

📝 Previous Year Questions

UPSC Mains 2023 GS Paper I, Q14