To secure the coastline of West Bengal, the Indian Coast Guard will conduct a biennial coastal security exercise from tomorrow.
The two-day-long exercise aims at validating standard operating procedures on command and control, communications and response tactics in case of any eventualities.
"Such exercises form the backbone of coastal security setup. The cohesive efforts by all stake holders during such mock drills help to find and plug loopholes in the coastal security mechanism," Coast Guard Commander Inspector General K R Nautiyal said.
The exercise to be held off the West Bengal coast gains importance in the wake of recent terror attacks in neighbouring Bangladesh, officials said.
The exercise aims at checking the efficacy of layered security arrangements -- air surveillance, deep sea patrol by bigger ships of coast guard and navy and close coast patrol by coast guard interceptor boats, air cushion vehicles (hovercrafts), boats of Marine Police, CISF, customs, ports and forest department etc.
During the exercise, various threat situations will be simulated and efforts to neutralise the threats will be the priority for the stake holders, they said.
The exercise was preceded by a planning conference chaired by state additional chief secretary last month.
The progress of the exercise is supervised by neutral observers from all stake holders so as to inject necessary mid-course corrections during progress of exercise and also to provide feedback for future exercises.
Since January 2015, a total of 61 community interaction programmes were conducted to integrate the fishermen and the local populace into coastal security setup of West Bengal to avoid a re-run of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks where terrorists came to India via sea route.
In addition to the bi-annual coastal security exercise, Indian Coast Guard also conducts monthly exercise 'Sachet' to maintain synergy between participating agencies.
