India, has a of 7,516 km, 1,300 island and islets, and an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 2.172 million km. The ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ) of India, which presently extends to a distance of 200 nm into the sea will soon be enlarged to 3.2 million square kilometres with the adoption of the continental shelf limits for determining the EEZ. This entire space of coastal areas comprising more than 200 Ports and harbours, several thousand fishing villages across77 districts housing 18% of India’s population. In addition critical infrastructure, such as nuclear plants, refineries, mega cities, shipyards and vital security installations, also dot the coastline. Its sea areas are utilised for oil and gas, fisheries, mariculture, undersea cabling, test firing ranges for rockers and weapons, marinas etc. , territorial waters, contiguous zone and the EEZ have several users which includes 19 Ministries in the Central Government and numerous departments and agencies. Unlike the land area of India where very inch of land has been mapped and assigned a specified land use there is no such sea space use rights been demarcated. To avoid jurisdictional and conflict between the various user agencies it is now time to undertake a comprehensive marine spatial planning of the coastline, territorial waters contiguous zones and the 3.2 million sq km of EEZ. This task would need to be undertaken at the Central Level, state level and down to the district level so that sea use rights and applications are integrated into the national economy and security. Hence Marine Spatial Planning must be undertaken as a National Priority