India to build naval bases in Agatti and Minicoy Islands

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will be on board INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant task forces to inaugurate a naval base in Minicoy on March 4-5

Published on: Feb 14, 2024, 09:56:49 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep, India has decided to firmly extend its naval footprint by establishing naval bases in Agatti and Minicoy Islands along with air bases in order to secure the vital sea lands of communication.

The carrier task forces of INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant while enroute to Minicoy Islands will be a sight to behold

The Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands sits on the nine degree channel through which billions of dollars worth of commercial trade passes through while enroute to South-East Asia and North Asia. Minicoy Islands is a mere 524 kilometers from Maldives.

ALSO READ: Why the proposed military base at Minicoy Islands will be a game-changer

India will be making a major maritime security statement when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on board INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant carrier task forces which includes nearly 15 warships will travel to Minicoy Islands with naval brass to inaugurate a naval base INS Jatayu on March 4-5.

The Indian Navy plans for hold the first phase of Combined Commanders Conference on board Indian aircraft carriers with the two armadas travelling from Goa to Karwar to Minicoy Islands to Kochi. The second phase of commanders conference will be held on March 6-7.

It is understood that the Modi government has decided to build new airstrip at Minicoy Islands and upgrade the air strip at Agatti islands with plans to station naval assets at INS Jatayu. This decision dovetails into Modi government’s strategy to use its islands territories to project power in the Indo-Pacific in support of maritime security of the region.

While India is already developing its force capability in Andamans and Nicobar Islands with new facilities at Campbell Bay in Great Nicobar, the move to upgrade the Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands will not only protect commercial shipping but also lead to infrastructure upgrade and tourism in the island territories.

The geographical location of Lakshadweep and Minicoy Islands and the Andamans and Nicobar Islands is such that India can safeguard the maritime trade routes while countering the challenge of rapidly expanding Chinese Navy and their supplicants in the Indian Ocean.

The main commercial shipping route from Suez Canal or Persian Gulf to South East Asia and beyond goes through the nine degree channel (between Lakshadweep and Minicoy) and the ten degree channel (between Andamans and Nicobar Islands). India dominates even the trade route via Sunda and Lombok Straits of Indonesia.

The carrier task forces of INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant while enroute to Minicoy Islands will be a sight to behold as they will be accompanied by destroyers, frigates and submarines. Such level of force projection has never been seen in the past and will make the adversary and its supplicants think twice before playing mischief in the Indian Ocean region.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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