The Andhra Pradesh State fisheries authorities have finalised a draft to constitute ‘Sagar Mitras,’ an alternative coastal intelligence system, to be deployed at all fish landing points along the 974-km-long coastline. Under the Sagar Mitra system, each fish landing point — between Srikakulam district sharing border with Odisha and Nellore sharing border with Tamil Nadu — will have a five-member team. The teams’ task is to document movements of strangers, new vehicles and other activities and alert the intelligence wings which in turn will take steps to prevent the entry of elements planning to carry out terrorist attacks. This will become an additional intelligence-gathering appartus supplementing the efforts of the marine police and the Coast Guard,” said Mr. Seetaramaraju. “A request has been made to the Central government to set up four branches in the State to issue biometric cards to fishermen,” said Mr. Seetaramaraju.

Source: The Hindu May 08, 2019 19:30 UTC