Discuss the constitutional and administrative challenges in regulating marine fishing across territorial waters and the Exclusive Economic Zone. Illustrate with a recent Supreme Court intervention.

India's marine fisheries rest on a two-tier legal regime: States regulate fishing within territorial waters up to 12 nautical miles, while the Union governs the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) up to 200 nautical miles under the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, EEZ and Other Maritime Zones Act, 1976 [1]. This zonal split makes overlapping jurisdiction, not fish stocks alone, the core regulatory problem.

Constitutional challenges

• Divided competence: "Fisheries" is a State subject (Entry 21, List II), but fishing beyond territorial waters falls to the Union (Entry 57, List I) — one continuous sea, two law-making authorities [1].
• Conflicting rule-books: gear banned by a State within its waters may be lawfully permitted in the EEZ under Central rules, as with the Sustainable Harnessing of Fisheries in the EEZ Rules, 2025 [2].
• The transit gap: no clear constitutional rule governs a vessel that must cross State waters to exercise a Central right in the EEZ.

Administrative challenges

• Enforcement: without a demarcated corridor, States cannot distinguish genuine EEZ-bound transit from illegal fishing inside territorial waters [3].
• Monitoring capacity: reliance on Vessel Tracking Systems, Coast Guard and marine police involves multiple agencies with weak data-sharing [3].
• Conservation versus livelihood: purse seine and pair trawling threaten juvenile stocks and artisanal fishers, prompting bans; the 2025 Rules similarly prohibit LED and pair trawling while prioritising cooperatives and FFPOs for deep-sea access [2].

Supreme Court intervention (September 2026)

• The Court directed Tamil Nadu to frame "specified channel" rules under its Marine Fishing Regulation Rules, 2020, for purse seine vessels transiting to the EEZ, building on its 2023 order permitting conditional, VTS-tracked EEZ fishing [3].
• It expressly invoked cooperative federalism, harmonising the two regimes instead of invalidating either [3].

Marine governance thus needs coordination, not competition. A harmonised model marine fisheries framework, joint Centre-State monitoring and channel demarcation can reconcile livelihood, sustainability and the blue-economy vision of Budget 2025-26 [4], advancing SDG-14 in a genuinely federal spirit.