India skirts maritime border dispute with Pakistan by fresh continental-shelf claim

India expands maritime claim in Arabian Sea, navigates disputes with Pakistan, Oman, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.

India has increased its claim in the Central Arabian Sea, as part of its ‘extended continental shelf’ by nearly 10,000 square km but also modified an earlier claim to avoid a long-standing dispute with Pakistan over the maritime boundary between the two countries, suggest documents submitted earlier this month with the United Nations.

Coastal countries have an ‘exclusive economic zone,” (EEZ) which gives exclusive mining and fishing rights, upto 200 nautical miles from their coastlines. In addition to this, such states can make claims for more area in the ocean provided they can scientifically establish to a UN body, called the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), that this claimed area extends unbroken from their landmass all the way till the sea bed.

All of this oceanic area is considered part of a country’s extended continental shelf. This gives them rights to commercially mine for valuable minerals, polymetallic nodules and oil reserves. India already has 12 nautical miles of territorial sea and 200 nautical miles of the EEZ measured from the baselines.

“With the anticipated addition of approximately 1.2 million square km of extended continental shelf from the two submissions to the ~2 million sq. km of EEZ, India’s seabed and sub-seabed area would become almost equal its land area of 3.274 million sq. km,” according to the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), Goa.

India made its first claim in 2009 in vast stretches of sea spanning the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Due to geology, the continental shelf of a country can frequently over-lap with another and the process of scrutinising and deciding upon the claims of countries can run into years.

While India’s claims are still being weighed upon, Pakistan in 2021 objected to portions of India’s claimed territory in the Western offshore regions on the grounds that nearly 100 nautical miles overlapped with a maritime border that was under ‘dispute.’

Specifically, this referred to a dispute between the countries over the Sir Creek, a strip of water in the marshes of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. The creek roughly separates the Kutch region in India and Pakistan’s Sindh province. While India countered these objections, the net result was that the CLCS, in March 2023 rejected the entirety of India’s claim in the Arabian Sea region. However, the Commission gives leeway to countries to submit ‘modified claims.’