After 67 years, India has charted a new course with a modernized merchant shipping legislation, poised to reshape the nation's maritime future. After a decade-long legislative process that began in 2015, the new Merchant Shipping Act, 2025 (2025 Act) was finally passed by both Houses of the Parliament of India during the Monsoon Session in August 2025. On 18th August 2025, the Act received the assent of the President of India, marking its formal enactment as the official law of the land on that date. However, this legislation has not become immediately applicable in India, and its entry into force requires a separate Government notification, upon which it will replace the existing Merchant Shipping Act of 1958 (1958 Act).
Merchant shipping or international shipping is the backbone of global trade and critical component of the global supply chain. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), approximately 80% of global trade by volume is carried by sea through merchant shipping. For India, this figure is even higher, with around 95% of its international trade by volume reliant on maritime transport. In 2021, India unveiled its ambitious decade-long strategy for the maritime sector—Maritime India Vision (MIV) 2030 outlining actionable plans to steer the country toward a safe, sustainable, and secure maritime future. Among other priorities, the plan specifically emphasized the need to strengthen India's policy and institutional framework by amending and reforming the existing shipping legislation. The aims were to enhance ease of doing business, boost Indian tonnage, improve port safety, regulate fishing vessels, advance seafarer training and welfare, ensure compliance with international maritime law, and strengthen India's maritime emergency preparedness. The 2025 Act delivers this vision. Among its myriad features, certain aspects of the 2025 Act are novel in India's maritime legislative history. This article attempts to shed some light on them.
Ease of Compliance and Doing Business
At the outset, the 2025 Act effectively eliminates the structural redundancies and overlaps that had accumulated over decades within the 1958 Act. It presents a concise structure of 16 Parts comprising of 325 sections, which is nearly half of the 1958 Act. Over the last 6 decades, the 1958 Act had become fragmented and bulky having undergone multiple reforms through various legislative amendments. This made the 1958 Act a sprawling framework of over 560 sections, which were not easily decipherable by section numbers alone and often required cross-referencing to trace their applicability. Consequently, the structure of the 1958 Act undermined legislative clarity, adversely affecting ease of compliance and doing business. This posed a significant challenge for the maritime sector, which is highly capital-intensive and sensitive to regulatory burdens. Non-business-friendly legislation in such a sector not only deters domestic and foreign investment but also stifles the overall growth and competitiveness of the industry. The streamlined structure of the 2025 Act eases regulatory compliance.
Contrary to the fragmented compliance provisions within the 1958 Act, the new Act simplifies regulatory compliance by dedicating an entire chapter on Survey, Audit, and Certification, making it more straightforward for stakeholders to navigate requirements. The new Act also boosts investor confidence by decriminalizing minor offences under the Union Government's Jan Vishwas initiative. Now, penalties for such minor issues can be imposed by Administrators (Principal Officers), while only serious cases will go to court, saving time and resources.
Increasing Indian tonnage
The 2025 Act makes a significant attempt to facilitate increase of Indian tonnage, that is, the number of ships registered in India. Higher national tonnage helps demonstrate a country's trade and economic strength, and also enhances national emergency preparedness and security. Therefore, the 2025 Act broadens the scope of mandatory ship registration to include all seagoing vessels even if they do not call at an Indian port, regardless of tonnage or means of propulsion. This includes vessels below 15 net tons navigating on the coasts of India, which the 1958 Act expressly excluded. Also, the rules for registering ships were scattered across different laws depending on where the ship operated and how it was powered. The 2025 Act unifies all categories of ships under a single registration framework, ensuring legal clarity, maritime safety, better compliance, and a more efficient registry for all vessels regardless of size, purpose, or propulsion.
Importantly, the 2025 Act re-crafts and expands the ownership criteria for registering vessels under the Indian flag. It allows Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs), and empowers the Central Government with the flexibility to notify other modern corporate structures, like Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), as eligible entities for registering vessels in India. The scope of registry is further broadened by enabling registration of foreign vessels leased or chartered by an Indian under bareboat charter-cum-demise contract where the initially rented ship without crew and ownership is intended to be transferred to the Indian charterer. The Act also enables temporary registration of foreign ships for recycling in India, supporting a safer and compliant ship recycling process.
Seafarer's and Fishers' Welfare and Protection
The 2025 Act updates provisions on seafarers' education and welfare to align with international standards set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions. The new Act not only aligns seafarers' labour standards with international law (Maritime Labour Convention 2006) but also includes enabling provisions for safety for fishing vessels and fisherman, as may be deemed necessary. To ensure broader protection for people professionally engaged at sea, provisions on ILO Convention C-188, as may be applicable, have been incorporated. It includes measures not only for the relief and upkeep of abandoned seafarers, but also empowers the Central Government to send replacement crew for any Indian or foreign vessel abandoned in or near Indian coastal waters. This is a proactive measure ensuring the safety, welfare, and timely repatriation of seafarers, while also preventing abandoned vessels from becoming a hazard or burden in Indian waters.
Strengthening India's Sovereign Maritime Enforcement, Jurisdiction and Emergency Preparedness
Similar to the right of hot pursuit under Article 111 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Act empowers the Government to pursue foreign vessels into the high seas to investigate and seize such vessel, if necessary, in the event they violate Indian laws within its coastal waters. Moreover, in accordance with Article 92, paragraph 2, of UNCLOS, the Act provides that ships not legally entitled to fly any nation's flag, or those that have lost such a right, may be treated as vessels without nationality and detained by the Government.
The Act includes provisions to manage abandoned vessels, which are ships whose owners cannot be found, or which are abandoned by their owners or operators due to lack of intention or hope to recover them, lack of finances, or failure in meeting legal obligations. The 1958 Act clubbed any vessel abandoned without hope or intention of recovery as a mere wreck, while the 2025 Act enables a focused and specialised approach to deal with abandoned vessels recognising the operational, legal, environmental, and humanitarian complexities involved. For instance, it mandates that abandoned vessels must meet seaworthiness standards for registration under the Indian flag, and empowers the Central Government to issue directions for their safe, secure, and sustainable handling, while also allowing recovery of related costs.
Also, addressing the crucial shortcoming of the 1958, the new Act creates a dedicated chapter to handle maritime incidents and emergencies, empowering the appointment of a nodal authority, designating the party responsible for primary response, and outlining necessary plans and procedures. This regulatory move empowers the Indian Government to proactively manage maritime emergencies like the recent incidents involving MSC Elsa 3 and Wan Hai 503 that pose risks to India's safety.
Robust implementation of international maritime obligations
The 2025 Act mandates every vessel, company, and port to comprehensively comply with and adhere to a broad range of international maritime conventions covering safety of life and ships and search and rescue at sea, marine environmental protection and maritime labour standards, among others. Unlike the critical gap in the 1958 Act, the new Act explicitly requires all types of vessels, including fishing and sailing vessels, to comply with international standards for safety, security, pollution prevention, and insurance. This means better protection for lives at sea, stronger environmental safeguards, and improved accountability across all maritime activities, closing loopholes that previously left smaller or non-traditional vessels unregulated.
Commercial Shipping Transparency
A novel feature of the 2025 Act is the mandatory transparency in shipping charges aiming to ensure commercial transparency and accountability in the carriage of goods by sea. It requires every service provider or agent involved with Indian vessels or vessels operating in coastal waters to clearly specify all charges payable by exporters, importers, consignors, or consignees in the transport document. Failure to disclose or levying undisclosed charges will result in a penalty. The authority to impose such penalties and hear appeals will be designated by the Central Government through notification, with the assurance that no penalty order will be passed without giving the concerned party a reasonable opportunity to be heard.
Enhanced Statutory Clarity for Maritime Administration
The 2025 Act redefines the role of the existing Director General of Shipping as the Director General of Maritime Administration (DGMA), thereby expanding and formalising the statutory responsibilities of India's maritime authority. The new Act also doubles as a legal tool to update the existing Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021, empowering the DGMA to issue enforceable directions to the Director General under that law helping improve coordination and streamline oversight between maritime authorities. To strengthen maritime security, the Act empowers the government to establish a dedicated body responsible for securing ships and port facilities. This body will enforce security regulations, facilitate timely information sharing, and coordinate with other agencies, in line with international standards especially the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code. The ISPS Code is a component of the International Convention on Safety of Life at Sea, which sets a comprehensive mandatory security regime for international shipping.
Maritime E-governance
The new Act modernizes maritime administration by enabling electronic filing, issuance, and payment of all required documents, boosting efficiency and transparency. It also mandates a digital vessel inspection system with a risk-profile database to enhance safety and compliance at Indian ports.
Decisive Legislative Step
Over the past 10 years, the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025, has evolved through extensive consultations across multiple stages among parliamentarians, bureaucrats, policymakers, industry stakeholders, and the public. It marks a major reform for India's shipping and maritime sector, streamlining outdated laws to align with contemporary international maritime standards and evolving national needs. It is a decisive step toward positioning India as a global leader in a safe, secure, and sustainable maritime sector, in line with MIV 2030 as well as the national vision of Viksit Bharat. The Act marks a transformative shift from a regulation-heavy framework to a facilitative policy environment that boosts investor confidence, enhances safety standards, protects the marine ecosystem, and strengthens India's stature as a global maritime power.
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