I totally Disagree with Gr Capt Muralidharan's Views. Internationally SAR of a nation is mandated to its Coast Guard. In our case Indian Coast Guard is the sole authority to conduct maritime SAR. They have been doing it day in day out. Other defence forces are supposed to be the support agencies to augment Coast Guard SAR Efforts. In our case it is one up case. The Defence forces want to seek lime light in SAR cases and send Coast Guard to the back Bench. Lets be frank. which defence force Army Navy or IAF would like to act as a recource agency and operate under Coast Guard instructions??? None. Please let the professionals do their Job. Leave it to coast Guard to do the Job. They are trained with USCG to conduct SAR in Indian Ocean. In fact they monitor Indian Search and Rescue Region and are the SAR Point of contact for 13 neighboring countries. They are in direct contact with ISRO Bangalore for SAR. The agony in military is that the senior service thinks they know every thing .Do leave the entire operation to ICG and let them do their Job.
