Geography Quiz: India's Coastline and Maritime Zones

The figure usually quoted is 7,516.6 kilometres, which counts the coast of the mainland together with that of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep.

Its coast runs along the Gulf of Kachchh and the Gulf of Khambhat and around the Kathiawar peninsula, which gives it a far longer shoreline than any other State, and it is followed by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

Under the Maritime Zones Act of 1976 the territorial waters extend to twelve nautical miles from the baseline, and within them India has sovereignty over the water, the seabed, the subsoil and the air space, subject only to the right of innocent passage of foreign ships.

Within this zone the coastal State has sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing the living and non-living resources of the water, the seabed and the subsoil, and exclusive jurisdiction over artificial islands, marine scientific research and the protection of the marine environment.

The Ten Degree Channel runs roughly along the parallel of ten degrees north and separates Little Andaman in the south of the Andaman group from Car Nicobar in the north of the Nicobar group.

Chilika is a shallow lagoon on the Utkal coast, cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a long sand bar and connected to it by a narrow mouth, which is why its water is brackish; it is the largest lagoon of the country, a Ramsar site and the winter…

Barren Island lies in the Andaman Sea to the east of Middle Andaman and is the only confirmed active volcano in India; Narcondam, also in the Andaman group, is treated as dormant.

Indira Point at the southern tip of Great Nicobar is the southernmost point of the territory of India and lies close to the equator; it was earlier called Pygmalion Point and Parsons Point, and its lighthouse subsided during the earthquake and tsunami of December 2004.

In this belt the coastal State is not sovereign, but it may exercise the control needed to prevent and punish the infringement of its customs, fiscal, immigration and sanitary laws within its territory or territorial sea.

The western coastal plain is narrow, steep and submergent, so the rivers of the Western Ghats reach the sea through estuaries rather than deltas, and the drowned valleys give deep natural harbours such as Mumbai, Marmagao, New Mangalore and Kochi, besides the Kerala backwaters called kayals.