New Delhi. 26 July 2016. Indian Coast Guard, being the nodal agency for Maritime Search and Rescue, has rescued a total of 7116 lives by coordinating 2410 Search and Rescue missions by conducting 2023 air sorties and 2389 ship sorties, since inception. 
 
1During the last one year, a total of 637 precious lives were saved, out of which 312 lives were rescued by Indian Coast Guard independently and remaining 325 lives were saved in coordination with fishermen, merchant mariners and other resource agencies.
 
The XV National Maritime Search and Rescue Board (NMSARB) Meeting was held at Vigyan Bhavan Annexe, New Delhi on27 Jul 16.  Dr Harsh Vardhan, Hon’ble Union Minister of Earth Sciences was the chief guest for the inauguration and launch of the Search and Rescue Aid Tool (‘SARAT’) designed and developed by Indian National Centre of Ocean Information Services (INCOIS).
While addressing the gathering the Hon’ble minister applauded the efforts of ICG and INCOIS in development of the useful technological aid and advised the members to adopt an innovative and out of the box approach to meet the challenges.
 
1The meeting was chaired by DG Rajendra Singh, PTM, TM, Director General Indian Coast Guard & Chairman, National Maritime Search & Rescue Board. The Board meets annually to discuss policy issues, formulate guidelines and procedures, and considers recommendations on updating the National Search and Rescue plan.                                            
During his opening address, the Chairman highlighted various initiatives of Indian Coast Guard for improving Search and Rescue infrastructure and services. He also stressed on the need for strengthening the cooperation mechanism between various resource agencies for efficiently undertaking search and rescue in the Indian Search and Rescue Region.
 
 
1Every year, the NMSAR Board recognizes the SAR efforts of merchant mariners, Govt owned vessels and fishermen.  MV Hafnia Asia was awarded the Indian Coast Guard SAR Award for Merchant Vessel for saving 08 precious lives.  Indian Coast Guard SAR Award for Fishermen was awarded to Mr. Moka Naganna for saving 04 precious lives.  T
 
The ESSAR SAR Award for Government Owned SAR Unit, were jointly awarded to CSG (Marine Police) boat FIB TN-MP-12-01 for rescuing 08 lives and Indian Coast Guard Ship C-410 for saving 19 precious lives.