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New rules let India fish its own EEZ and high seas

Two MEA-notified instruments of 2025 treat India's deep-sea and high-seas catch as Indian-origin and import-duty-free, opening a maritime zone the country has long under-fished.

What happened

The Ministry of External Affairs has notified two instruments that, for the first time, lay down a clear legal route for Indian-flagged vessels to fish in India's own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and on the High Seas beyond it.
The Sustainable Harnessing of Fisheries in the EEZ Rules, 2025 were notified on 4 November 2025; the companion Guidelines for Sustainable Harnessing of Fisheries in the High Seas by Indian-flagged vessels followed on 9 December 2025.
Both flow from the parent statute — the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, Exclusive Economic Zone and Other Maritime Zones Act, 1976.
The headline change is fiscal: fish caught in the EEZ or High Seas and landed at an Indian port is treated as Indian-origin produce and is exempt from import duty; the same catch landed at a foreign port is treated as an Indian export.
The framework rides alongside a wider fisheries push — 34 fisheries clusters notified across the country under the flagship scheme PMMSY, including a dedicated Tuna cluster in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and Budget 2026–27's plan for integrated development of 500 reservoirs and Amrit Sarovars.
Traceability and food-safety compliance for export markets are routed through MPEDA Catch Certificates and EIC Health Certificates issued via the ReALCRaft portal, with mid-sea handling permitted under a mother–child (mother–vessel) transshipment model.

Background & context

India is a maritime nation with a coastline of roughly 11,099 kilometres across nine coastal States and four Union Territories, and a sovereign-rights claim over one of the larger Exclusive Economic Zones in the world — an area extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline. Yet for decades the bulk of Indian marine fishing has hugged the near shore. Deep-sea waters within the EEZ, and the still-deeper oceanic stocks such as tuna that migrate through and beyond it, were lightly exploited by the domestic fleet, partly because no clean, dedicated legal mechanism told an Indian-flagged vessel how to operate there, how its catch would be classified, and how it would be taxed on landing. The result was an odd gap: fish drawn from India's own waters could end up treated, in effect, like an import.

The legal spine for all of this is the Maritime Zones Act of 1976. That Act gives statutory shape to the maritime zones recognised under the international law of the sea — the territorial waters (extending 12 nautical miles), the contiguous zone (up to 24 nautical miles), the continental shelf, and the Exclusive Economic Zone (up to 200 nautical miles) — and vests in the Union Government the power to regulate exploration and exploitation of living and non-living resources within them. Within the EEZ a coastal State does not hold full territorial sovereignty; it holds sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing resources, together with jurisdiction over matters such as marine scientific research and the protection of the marine environment. The High Seas lie beyond any national EEZ and are, under the law of the sea, open to all States, with fishing on them governed by the principle of freedom of the high seas tempered by conservation duties. The 2025 Rules and Guidelines are the subordinate legislation that finally operationalises this dormant authority for the fisheries sector — rules made under an Act, not a new Act in themselves.

The reform also sits inside a dense scheme architecture for fisheries that an aspirant should be able to place. The umbrella flagship is the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), launched in 2020 under the Department of Fisheries (Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying), which succeeded the earlier Blue Revolution programme and carries the headline target of expanding fish production and fishers' incomes. Around it run the Fisheries and Aquaculture Infrastructure Development Fund (FIDF), a dedicated infrastructure-financing fund; the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Kisan Samriddhi Sah-Yojana (PM-MKSSY), a sub-scheme aimed at formalising the sector and improving access to credit and insurance; and welfare instruments such as the Group Accident Insurance Scheme (GAIS) for fishers and the extension of the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) to fish farmers. The 34 fisheries clusters — and the Andaman & Nicobar tuna cluster in particular — are the spatial, value-chain expression of this push, and the new EEZ and High Seas instruments are the legal door that lets the deep-sea end of that value chain actually open.

For Prelims

The two instruments: Sustainable Harnessing of Fisheries in the EEZ Rules, 2025 (notified 4 Nov 2025) and the Guidelines for Sustainable Harnessing of Fisheries in the High Seas by Indian-flagged vessels (notified 9 Dec 2025).
Notifying authority: the Ministry of External Affairs — because the parent Act on maritime zones is administered through the foreign-affairs/law-of-the-sea domain — while the sectoral push is led by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying.
Parent statute: the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, Exclusive Economic Zone and Other Maritime Zones Act, 1976. The 2025 Rules/Guidelines are subordinate legislation under it, not a fresh Act.
The EEZ: the maritime zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, where India holds sovereign rights over resources (not full territorial sovereignty). The territorial sea extends 12 nautical miles; the contiguous zone up to 24.
The High Seas: waters beyond any national EEZ, open to all States; Indian-flagged vessels fishing there do so under the freedom-of-the-high-seas principle, subject to conservation obligations.
The fiscal rule: EEZ/High-Seas catch landed at an Indian port = Indian-origin, exempt from import duty; landed at a foreign port = treated as an export.
Traceability chain: MPEDA Catch Certificates + EIC (Export Inspection Council) Health Certificates, processed through the ReALCRaft portal; mid-sea handling via a mother–child vessel transshipment model.
The cluster context: 34 fisheries clusters notified under PMMSY, including a Tuna cluster in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands; Budget 2026–27 announced integrated development of 500 reservoirs/Amrit Sarovars, with 23 reservoirs approved under PMMSY.
The scheme family it sits in: PMMSY (the 2020 umbrella, successor to the Blue Revolution) · FIDF (infrastructure fund) · PM-MKSSY (formalisation sub-scheme) · GAIS (accident insurance) · KCC for fishers.

What it is NOT: This is not a new Act of Parliament — it is two pieces of subordinate legislation (Rules + Guidelines) made under the 1976 Maritime Zones Act. It is not a customs/tariff notification by the Finance Ministry; the duty-exemption effect flows from re-classifying the catch as Indian-origin under these MEA-notified instruments. The EEZ is not Indian sovereign territory like the territorial sea — India holds sovereign rights over resources there, not full sovereignty. And the High Seas are not part of India's EEZ at all; they lie beyond it and belong to no State.

For UPSC: EEZ Fisheries Rules, 2025 + High Seas Guidelines, 2025 = MEA-notified subordinate legislation under the Maritime Zones Act, 1976; their core effect is to make domestic deep-sea/high-seas catch Indian-origin and import-duty-free when landed in India. EEZ = 200 nm, sovereign rights over resources; High Seas = beyond the EEZ, open to all.

Why it matters

The problem the framework addresses is a structural under-use of India's own ocean. With near-shore stocks under pressure from over-fishing and seasonal effort, the deep-sea EEZ and oceanic high-seas stocks — tuna above all — are where additional marine production realistically lies, and they are exactly where the domestic fleet was thinnest. By removing the perverse tax treatment that made home-water catch behave like an import, and by giving vessels a defined legal path, certification route and transshipment model, the rules lower the cost and the uncertainty of fishing far from shore. That feeds directly into the income objective of PMMSY and into the trade objective behind MPEDA-certified seafood exports, where traceability to a verified catch is increasingly a condition of market access in the European Union and other destinations. There is also a strategic dimension: a working Indian deep-sea presence in the EEZ strengthens the country's effective management of its maritime zone and supports the broader blue-economy agenda, while raising the genuine policy tension the move must manage — expanding effort without exhausting the very stocks (and the marine environment) the parent Act also tasks the State to conserve.

For Mains

Anchor

A question on India's blue economy or on the legal and institutional framework for marine fisheries can be built directly around the 2025 EEZ Rules and High Seas Guidelines as the operative reform that finally opens the deep-sea zone under the 1976 Maritime Zones Act.

Exemplification

On crops/animal-rearing and allied-sector reform (GS3.5), the import-duty reclassification of domestic deep-sea catch is a clean worked example of how a fiscal-and-regulatory tweak — not a new subsidy — unlocks an under-used resource and raises fishers' incomes.

Substantiation

The 34 PMMSY clusters, the Andaman & Nicobar tuna cluster, the 500 reservoirs/Amrit Sarovars of Budget 2026–27, and the MPEDA–EIC–ReALCRaft traceability stack supply concrete data points for answers on fisheries, food security and the blue economy.

Problematisation

The reform sharpens the conservation-versus-effort tension: the same 1976 Act that grants sovereign rights to exploit EEZ resources also charges the State with protecting the marine environment, so expanding deep-sea effort must be weighed against stock sustainability and the freedom-of-the-high-seas conservation duties.

Way-forward

It points to a sustainability-first template — defined legal access plus mandatory catch-traceability — that other resource sectors and India's law-of-the-sea engagement (including high-seas biodiversity governance) can build on.

Position

The government's stated stance is to treat domestic deep-sea fishing as an Indian-origin economic activity to be encouraged and formalised, while binding it to certification and traceability rather than leaving it unregulated.

Deploys into: blue economy & marine fisheries reform (GS3.5); India's maritime zones and law-of-the-sea framework, and bilateral/regional ocean governance (GS2.18); allied-sector incomes and food security.

Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry & Dairying · 2026-03-19 · PRID 2242417 · PIB source ↗

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