India, Jan. 5 -- Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Monday commissioned the Indian Coast Guard's (ICG) first pollution-control vessel, 'Samudra Pratap', the first indigenously designed vessel of its kind and the largest in the ICG fleet.

Singh said the vessel, which has over 60 per cent indigenous content, embodied India's mature defence industrial ecosystem, which can effectively handle complex manufacturing challenges, adding that efforts are underway to increase indigenous content in ships to 90%.

"India's grand maritime vision, which recognises that marine resources are not the property of any one country, but the collective inheritance of humanity. And when the inheritance is collective, then protection also needs to be collective. ...