India has serious maritime bounday disputes with Bangladesh, Lanka & Pakistan

Bharat has land disputes with Lanka, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. She has maritime disputes with Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Lanka. The dispute with Bangladesh involves the Continental shelf the economic rights that extend to 200 miles into the ocean.

Bharat wants to encroach on the Bangladeshi economic zone so that it can drill for oil and send its fleet of fisherman into the Bay of Bengal.

Bangladesh will take time, at least several months, to raise its objection at the United Nations to New Delhi’s claim over certain areas in the Bay of Bengal which has led to a dispute over demarcating maritime boundaries between the two neighbours.

Foreign ministry officials told New Age that India has already submitted its claim on maritime delimitation to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, a UN body to deal with the law of the seas, in May 2009, one month ahead of its deadline.

‘The commission is scheduled to ask Indian authorities for the hearing over its submission by March, 2010 and we are preparing to submit our response on Indian claims immediately before the hearing,’ said an official dealing with the process of Bangladesh’s claims over maritime boundary.

Officials in Dhaka said that they were working out the country’s response to the Indian claims in the Bay of Bengal, but preferred to take time to strengthen its claims incorporating various arguments.

With regards to delimitation of maritime boundary, the two South Asian neighbours have contentions over two areas—that of natural prolongation of the continental shelf and the baseline.

India has argued that the course of the natural prolongation of continental shelf is from east to west which is rejected by Bangladesh saying it is from north to south.

For delimitation of maritime boundary both Bangladesh and India have some overlapping claims on baselines.

Bangladesh is preparing its case for extraction of marine resources, especially gas exploration, in the Bay of Bengal, but has not been able to invite tenders for block biddings as its maritime boundary has not been demarcated as yet. MARITIME BOUNDARIES: Dhaka yet to counter Indian claims

India has unresolved boundary disputes with all her neighbors. On every occasion, and on every matter, she has refused to compromise, and resolve matters that could have been solved in minutes. Even after agreements have been made, the final drafts have been rejected. With the result that relations sour and peace is threatened. India with its vast coastline should not even make this an issue. A 10 x 25 mile area keeps peace hostage?

The new generation is forgetting the disputes and accepts them as the status quo. Pakistan has disputes with India. India has disputes with all her neighbors, mainly because India wants to slowly take away territory from the neighbors and absorb them into a huge country called Akhand Bharat.

According to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Seas, Bangladesh must demarcate its sea boundaries by July 27, 2011, India by June 29, 2009 and Myanmar by May 21, 2009.

‘We are taking preparations to put forward our objection at the UN by June to Myanmar’s claim and by November to India’s claim in the Bay of Bengal,’ an official involved with the issue told New Age.

Myanmar has already submitted its claim on maritime delimitation to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, and Bangladesh put its response at the UN to Myanmar’s claim in July, 2009.

As per the UN provision, claims submitted by any country would not be taken for final consideration before settling the objection raised by a neighbouring country which might have overlapping claims.

Bangladesh resumed negotiations with India and Myanmar last year, during the regime of the military-controlled interim government, after a lapse of almost three decades.

Dhaka opted to go for negotiations as India and Myanmar recently opposed Bangladesh’s offshore block biddings for exploration of oil and gas even within its own territorial waters as Dhaka did not have an internationally accepted exclusive economic zone.

Bangladesh has problems with India and Myanmar on the issue of ‘starting point’ on how to mark the coastlines from the exclusive economic zone that has apparently overlapped claims of the three neighbouring countries due to the funnel-like shape of the Bay of Bengal.

A country is supposed to enjoy its rights to fish and extract and explore other marine resources in its exclusive economic zone, an area of 200 nautical miles into an adjacent sea, according to international maritime law. http://www.newagebd.com/2009/sep/16/front.html

Bharat has a similar issue with Pakistan. By insisting that the boundary between Paksitan and Bharat be fixed in the middle of Sir Creek, Bharat wants to get additional space on the Continental Shelf.

Pakistan and India have major border disputes in Kashmir, Siachin, and “Sir Creek”. There is extensive material with maps and graphics on each one of these border disputes on this site. There is a dearth of graphics and maps in the Pakistani media. We over emphasize maps.

Pakistan resolved her boundaries with China in the early fifties, and gave up land for peace. Similarly with Iran, Pakistan gave up land to Iran to firm up a robust relationship. In return Pakistan enjoys a peace dividend with both the countries.

SUMMARY OF SIR CREEK DISPUTE

The issues in Sir Creek revolve around the following major points:

1. The issue is about Sir Creek, who owns it and where the boundary between Sindh and Gujrat lies.
2. The 1914 maps  and the boundary depicted on them. India consider the “green line on the agreed upon map as a “ribbon”. Pakistan considers the line as the boundary.
3. The boundary of Sindh and Gujarat as delineated in the maps of 1914
4. Navigable rivers have mid stream boundaries
5. Pakistan considers the Sir Creek estuary as non-navigable. India considers it as navigable
6. A mid-stream solution would involve Pakistan losing 250 square miles of territory. A Eastern boundary solution would mean a loss of 250 square miles for India.
7. The Maritime boundaries have to be defined by both countries. Details of the Maritime Laws (http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc99/proceed/papers/pap938/p938.htm)
8. The division of the Economic zone depends on the continental shelf. The part of the ocean floor that borders the continents is called the continental shelf. The continental shelf stretches for up to 124 miles into the Indian Ocean.
9. If there is oil in these marshlands, there is a possible economic impact to both India and Pakistan.

Location of Sir Creek

Sir Creek vicinity

British Empire

1893 map of Gujarat and Sindh. This map is similar to the 1914 map which once found will be placed here.

The Sir Creek is an estuary on the Indus delta

The mid stream (Indian position in blue) vs. East bank (Pakistani position in red) position.

Another map showing Pakistani position in green line on the East Coast of the creek.

The positions of India and Pakistan on the Sir Creek estuary.

India has a coastline 7,417 km long, out of which the Gujarat state has 1,663 km, which is one-third of the entire coastline, which makes Gujarat the principal maritime state of India. Because of a rich delta, Gujarat has the best fishing, and the Gulf of Kutch has the best fish known in India. Next to Gujarat is Pakistan, and there are no agreed maritime frontiers between the two. The Maritime Zones Act of India 1976 and 1981 under which the fishermen are caught and punished doesn’t conform to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which India has signed. Pakistan is guilty of the same non-conformity.

The rival geographies of India and Pakistan are symbolised by the rival cartographies relating to Sir Creek, which is a 100 km long estuary in the marshes of the Rann of Kutch between Gujarat and Sindh. Sir Creek is not a flowing creek but a tidal channel which has no officially demarcated boundary separating Pakistan and India. Till 1954 there was free movement across the Creek. Then came the issue of finding out where the border lay. And this border was also to decide where in the Arabian Sea the line will be drawn separating Indian waters from Pakistani waters.

Till these two issues are resolved, the two countries cannot set up their continental shelves up to 350 nautical miles and describe their economic zones up to 200 nautical miles. The deadline for doing so falls in 2009. This is the area where the two could find oil and gas deposits. They can’t exploit these deposits without first sorting out the maritime boundary dispute. And the line that is drawn to describe the national frontier along Sir Creek will decide who gets how much of the sea off the Gulf of Kutch. That explains why there is no ‘give and take’ in the bilateral negotiations.

The western side of Sir Creek is under Pakistani control, and there are naval installations on the Indian side. Pakistan owns 16 creeks of Sindh and lays claim to the 17th called Sir Creek by saying that the dividing line must run along the eastern bank of the Creek – on the basis of an old map that India no longer recognises despite past record of an agreement of 1914 signed by the governments of Bombay, Sindh and the Raja of Kutch.

The Pakistani claim thus includes the left bank of the Creek, which means that the maritime border too will have to run further east than where the Indians think it is right now. The Creek no longer flows and has shifted westwards, to Pakistan’s disadvantage. Pakistan wants the boundary established according to the historical maps; India wants that too but according to thalweg.

As both the countries are deadlocked after 9 rounds of discussions till 2006, the fisherfolk suffer at the hands of the police and intelligence agencies. These poor original owners of the coast are doomed because both countries have killed the world’s biggest mangroves and fish reserve through pollution and are now simply focused on oil and gas that might or might not be there on the continental shelf. Let’s hope that there is no secret discovery of oil or gas in the uncharted waters or the two will likely have another casus belli.Contested Coastlines: Fisherfolk, Nations and Borders in South Asia;

By Charu Gupta & Mukul Sharma Routledge 2008