Colombo Security Conclave Table Top Exercise Concludes at Visakhapatnam, Indian Ocean Maritime Security Cooperation Deepens

🗞️ Why in News The Table Top Exercise (TTX) of the Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) concluded on 11 September 2026 at the Headquarters, Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam. The three-day exercise, hosted by the Indian Navy, rehearsed coordinated regional responses to piracy, drug trafficking and human trafficking in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), with delegations and maritime security experts from the CSC’s member states.

Colombo Security Conclave: What It Is

The Colombo Security Conclave is a sub-regional maritime security grouping for the Indian Ocean. It began in 2011 as a trilateral maritime security cooperation dialogue among India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, at National Security Adviser (NSA) level. As background to its expansion, Mauritius joined as the fourth member at the 5th NSA-level meeting at Male (9 to 10 March 2022), where Bangladesh and Seychelles attended as observers. Bangladesh became the fifth full member in July 2024, at the 8th Deputy NSA-level meeting hosted virtually by Mauritius. The CSC Secretariat at Colombo, Sri Lanka has functioned since 2024, when the founding documents were signed there on 30 August 2024. The grouping has had six members since 2025: at the 7th NSA-level meeting in New Delhi on 20 November 2025, hosted by NSA Ajit Doval, the members welcomed Seychelles’ decision to accede as a full member.

The five formal pillars of CSC cooperation are:

• Maritime Safety and Security
• Countering Terrorism and Radicalisation
• Combating Trafficking and Transnational Organised Crime
• Cyber Security and Protection of Critical Infrastructure
• Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR)

The Visakhapatnam TTX

A Table Top Exercise is a scenario-based coordination drill conducted around a common set of maps, incident timelines and role-plays, rather than a live-at-sea deployment. It is used to align standard operating procedures, communication protocols and command relationships across participating agencies before a live exercise is attempted.

The exercise draws on the Indian Navy’s information-sharing backbone, the Information Fusion Centre - Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) at Gurugram, established in 2018, and the emerging CSC-wide information architecture built through the Secretariat at Colombo.

The Indian Ocean Region: Why Cooperation Matters

The Indian Ocean carries a large share of global seaborne trade and a large majority of the world’s crude oil movements. Non-traditional maritime security threats have proliferated in the region: Somali-origin piracy has receded from its 2010 peak but returned to attention in the 2023-24 window, drug trafficking through the “Southern Route” between the Makran and East African coasts is a large and structurally organised trade, and human trafficking along the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea corridors, including the transit of persecuted communities, remains an active concern.

India’s own architecture for this domain is layered:

IFC-IOR at Gurugram, hosted by the Indian Navy, aggregates white-shipping data from partner agencies across 55+ countries.

Information Fusion Centre and the White Shipping Agreements framework, currently with over 20 partners, allow tracking of merchant traffic.

SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), articulated in 2015 and updated as MAHASAGAR in 2025, is the umbrella doctrine that positions India as the “net security provider” in the region.

Colombo Security Conclave is the institutional forum through which SAGAR’s neighbourhood pillar operationalises with immediate maritime neighbours.

The Broader Architecture

CSC sits in a wider set of Indian Ocean cooperation platforms:

UPSC Relevance

GS Paper 2. India and its neighbourhood relations; bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements involving India and their effects on India’s interests.

GS Paper 3. Security challenges and their management in border areas and coastal areas; role of external state and non-state actors in creating challenges to internal security.

A question worth preparing. “Assess the Colombo Security Conclave as an operational vehicle of India’s SAGAR doctrine. How does it complement, and where does it duplicate, other Indian Ocean cooperation platforms? (250 words)”

The Mains framing. The CSC’s value lies in its narrowness: six members, all littoral or island states proximate to India, meet at NSA level on a five-pillar agenda, with a permanent Secretariat at Colombo. That narrowness is what lets it move on operational cooperation, including tabletop and live exercises, faster than the wider IORA or IONS. It is not a substitute for those platforms; it is the sub-regional operational layer of the same doctrine.

📌 Facts Corner, Knowledgepedia

Prelims, statement-ready facts:

• The Colombo Security Conclave (CSC) has six members: India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, Bangladesh and Seychelles.
• CSC began in 2011 as a trilateral NSA-level maritime security dialogue among India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
• Mauritius joined at the 5th NSA-level meeting at Male in March 2022.
• Bangladesh became the fifth full member in July 2024.
• Seychelles’ accession as a full member was welcomed at the 7th NSA-level meeting, New Delhi, 20 November 2025.
• The CSC founding documents were signed at Colombo, Sri Lanka on 30 August 2024, formally launching the Secretariat.
• The CSC’s five pillars are Maritime Safety and Security; Countering Terrorism and Radicalisation; Combating Trafficking and Transnational Organised Crime; Cyber Security; and HADR.
• The Table Top Exercise concluded on 11 September 2026 at Headquarters, Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam.
• The Indian Navy is the host service.
• The Information Fusion Centre - Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) is at Gurugram and has been operational since 2018.
• India’s Indian Ocean doctrine is SAGAR (2015), updated as MAHASAGAR (2025).
• Other Indian Ocean platforms: IORA (1997), IONS (2008) and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI, 2019).

Prelims, the traps:

• The CSC is not IORA and is not IONS; the three have different memberships, purposes and levels.
• The CSC’s Secretariat is at Colombo, not Male, Port Louis or Delhi.
• Bangladesh and Seychelles both attended in 2022 as observers and are full members now. Answers listing either as an observer are stale.
• Malaysia attended the November 2025 NSA meeting as a guest, not as a member.
• IFC-IOR at Gurugram is under the Indian Navy, not the Ministry of External Affairs; it is a national facility that hosts international liaison officers.
• SAGAR was articulated in 2015 during PM Modi’s visit to Mauritius; MAHASAGAR is the 2025 update.

Mains, arguments and keywords:

• CSC as the sub-regional operational layer of SAGAR/MAHASAGAR.
• Narrow membership at NSA level enables operational cooperation faster than a broader forum.
• Non-traditional threats: piracy, drug trafficking, human trafficking, IUU fishing, HADR.
• Information fusion: IFC-IOR, White Shipping Agreements, national maritime domain awareness.
• Keywords: SAGAR, MAHASAGAR, CSC, IFC-IOR, IONS, IORA, IPOI, TTX, HADR, littoral cooperation.

Interview, be ready for:

• “Is CSC an alternative to IORA?” No; the two are complementary. IORA is a 23-country economic and security dialogue; CSC is a six-member NSA-level operational forum.
• “How does India’s SAGAR doctrine benefit from CSC?” CSC gives SAGAR a standing forum in the immediate neighbourhood; TTX-to-live exercise progression is how the doctrine translates into operational cooperation.
• “What did the Visakhapatnam TTX rehearse?” Coordinated regional responses to piracy, drug trafficking and human trafficking, using scenario-based decision drills before a live exercise. The three-day exercise ran from 9 to 11 September 2026.

Sources: All India Radio, 7th CSC NSA meeting (November 2025), Maldives Foreign Ministry, 5th NSA-level meeting (March 2022), High Commission of India, Colombo, Indian Navy

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