Admiralty Jurisdiction in India — Which Courts Can Arrest a Ship, and How the 2017 Act Works

This article is for educational and legal awareness purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice or solicitation. Please consult a qualified advocate for advice on specific legal matters.

Overview

Lucknow is landlocked, and the Allahabad High Court — including its Lucknow Bench — does not exercise admiralty jurisdiction. That jurisdiction, over ships and maritime claims, is vested only in specific coastal High Courts under Indian law. This article explains how admiralty jurisdiction works in India: which courts exercise it, what claims it covers, how a ship is arrested to secure a claim, and how competing claims against the same vessel are ranked. It draws on the foundational Supreme Court judgment that shaped this area of law before Parliament legislated, and on the statute — the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017 — that now governs it.

What “Admiralty Jurisdiction” Means

Admiralty jurisdiction is a court’s power to hear disputes concerning ships and maritime activity, and — distinctively — to proceed “in rem”, that is, against the vessel itself rather than only against its owner personally. This matters because a foreign-owned ship may touch an Indian port only briefly, and its owner may have no other presence in India. An action in rem lets a court arrest the vessel — detain it in port — to secure a claim, even where the owner cannot otherwise be sued in India. Historically, this jurisdiction in India traced back to colonial-era English statutes extended to the Presidency High Courts (Bombay, Calcutta, Madras) and, later, to other High Courts as territories were reorganised.

The Foundational Case: M.V. Elisabeth (1992)

Before Parliament enacted a dedicated Indian statute, the scope of this jurisdiction was tested in M.V. Elisabeth and Ors. v. Harwan Investment and Trading Pvt. Ltd. (Supreme Court of India, 1993 AIR 1014, decided 26 February 1992, Bench: Justices T.K. Thommen and R.M. Sahai).

Facts: A vessel left the port of Marmagao without issuing the bills of lading required by the respondent company for goods it had shipped. At the port of destination, despite the respondent’s instruction not to release the cargo (because the buyer had not paid), the vessel’s owners delivered the goods to the consignee anyway. The respondent sued for this breach, invoking the admiralty jurisdiction of the Andhra Pradesh High Court by an action in rem, and the vessel was arrested when it entered the port of Visakhapatnam (later released against a bank guarantee). The vessel’s owners challenged jurisdiction, arguing that a foreign ship, owned by a foreign company with no place of business in India, could not be sued in rem in an Indian High Court over cargo carried from an Indian port to a foreign port.

What the Court held:

The Andhra Pradesh High Court possessed admiralty jurisdiction over the claim relating to inward and outward cargo, and had rightly assumed jurisdiction by arresting the vessel at Visakhapatnam.
Colonial-era statutes did not freeze the scope of Indian High Courts’ admiralty power as it stood in 1861. The Court reasoned that a High Court is a court of record with jurisdiction that is, in principle, unlimited except where expressly or by necessary implication barred — and that the mere survival of old colonial admiralty statutes under Article 372 of the Constitution “does not stultify the growth of law.”
The reach of the jurisdiction did not depend on where the defendant resided or where the cause of action arose. The Court observed that legal systems worldwide recognise the competence of a coastal state to assume jurisdiction over a foreign ship in its waters for well-recognised maritime claims, precisely because the ship’s stay is brief and its foreign owner is otherwise unreachable — so jurisdiction is exercised through arrest and detention of the ship itself.
The Court flagged an urgent need for Parliament to legislate a comprehensive law on admiralty courts, noting that India continued to be governed by admiralty statutes enacted for colonies by the British Parliament, decades after independence.

M.V. Elisabeth remains the starting point for understanding Indian admiralty law: it confirmed that Indian High Courts (as successors to the erstwhile courts of admiralty) had wide jurisdiction over foreign vessels for maritime claims, and it set the stage for the legislation that eventually followed a quarter-century later.

The Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017

Parliament answered the call in M.V. Elisabeth with the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017. The Act applies to every vessel, irrespective of the residence or domicile of its owner (Section 1), with limited exceptions for inland vessels and non-commercial government/warships.

Which Courts Exercise Admiralty Jurisdiction

Section 2(1)(e) of the Act defines “High Court”, for admiralty purposes, as any of the High Court of Calcutta, High Court of Bombay, High Court of Madras, High Court of Karnataka, High Court of Gujarat, High Court of Orissa, High Court of Kerala, and the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for the States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, or any other High Court as the Central Government may notify. These are the coastal High Courts. The Allahabad High Court — including its Lucknow Bench, which serves a landlocked region of Uttar Pradesh — is not among them and does not exercise admiralty jurisdiction.

Section 3 vests jurisdiction over “all maritime claims” in these respective High Courts, exercisable over the waters up to and including their territorial waters, with a proviso allowing the Central Government to notify an extension up to the outer limits defined under the Territorial Waters, Continental Shelf, Exclusive Economic Zone and Other Maritime Zones Act, 1976.

What Counts as a “Maritime Claim”

Section 4(1) lists an extensive set of claims over which a High Court may exercise jurisdiction against a vessel, including — among others — disputes over ownership or possession of a vessel; mortgages or charges on a vessel; loss or damage caused by the operation of a vessel; loss of life or personal injury connected with a vessel’s operation; loss of or damage to goods; agreements for carriage of goods or passengers (charter parties); salvage; towage and pilotage; goods, fuel, or services supplied for a vessel’s operation or maintenance; construction, repair, or equipping of a vessel; port and canal dues; wages due to the master or crew; disbursements on behalf of the vessel; general or particular average; disputes arising from a contract for sale of a vessel; insurance premiums (including mutual insurance/P&I calls) payable on a vessel; commission, brokerage, or agency fees; environmental damage caused by a vessel; and costs of raising, removing, or destroying a sunk, wrecked, or abandoned vessel. This breadth is why the practice area is described in terms as varied as ship construction, sale and purchase, leasing, insurance claims, and shipping contracts — they are all, at bottom, species of “maritime claim” under Section 4.

Arrest of a Vessel — the Core Remedy

Section 5(1) allows a High Court to order the arrest of a vessel within its jurisdiction to provide security for a maritime claim, where the court has reason to believe, among other grounds, that the person liable for the claim was the vessel’s owner (or demise charterer) both when the claim arose and when the arrest is effected, or that the claim is secured by a mortgage, charge, or maritime lien under Section 9. Section 5(2) also permits, in limited circumstances, the arrest of a sister vessel in place of the vessel actually connected with the claim. Once arrested, or once a vessel is sold under the Act, Section 4(4) provides that the vessel (or the sale proceeds) is held as security against any pending claim, and Section 8 provides that a vessel sold under the Act vests in the purchaser free of prior encumbrances, liens, and mortgages.

Alongside arrest (an action in rem), Sections 6 and 7 preserve the High Court’s jurisdiction to hear maritime claims in personam — that is, against a person rather than a vessel — subject to conditions on when a court will entertain such an action against a defendant with no Indian presence, particularly for collision-related claims.

Repeal of the Colonial Statutes

Section 17 of the 2017 Act repeals, in their application to India, the very colonial-era enactments M.V. Elisabeth had described as outdated: the Admiralty Court Act, 1840; the Admiralty Court Act, 1861; the Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890; the Colonial Courts of Admiralty (India) Act, 1891; and the admiralty provisions of the Letters Patent, 1865 as applicable to the Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras High Courts. Pending admiralty proceedings, however, continue to be adjudicated under the new Act’s provisions.

Priority Among Competing Claims

When multiple parties assert claims against the same arrested (and potentially sold) vessel, the 2017 Act establishes a clear ranking.

Maritime liens (Section 9): Certain claims are recognised as maritime liens — a special category attaching to the vessel itself and surviving a change of ownership, registration, or flag, though a lien lapses after one year (two years for wage-related claims) unless the vessel is arrested and sold within that period before it lapses. Section 9(1) ranks these liens inter se as follows: (a) wages and other sums due to the master, officers, and crew, including repatriation costs; (b) claims for loss of life or personal injury connected with the vessel’s operation; (c) salvage reward claims; (d) port, canal, waterway, and pilotage dues and other statutory dues; and (e) tort claims for loss or damage caused by the vessel’s operation (other than cargo/container damage).

Overall order of priority (Section 10): Across all claims in an admiralty proceeding, Section 10(1) ranks: (a) a claim secured by a maritime lien; (b) registered mortgages and similar charges on the vessel; and (c) all other claims — with claims within the same category ranking equally among themselves, and salvage claims within the lien category ranking in inverse chronological order (the more recent salvage service ranks ahead, reflecting that it preserved the fund from which earlier claims are paid).

This structured priority — liens first, then mortgages, then unsecured claims — is what distinguishes a maritime claim’s treatment from an ordinary money claim: it converts the arrested ship (or its sale proceeds) into a fund from which specific classes of creditors are paid in a fixed order, not first-come-first-served.

The Nature of a Maritime Claim: Liverpool & London P&I Association v. M.V. Sea Success I

The Supreme Court examined the character of a maritime claim in Liverpool & London S.P. & I Association Ltd. v. M.V. Sea Success I and Anr. (Supreme Court of India, Civil Appeal Nos. 5665-5666 of 2002, decided 20 November 2003, Bench: the then Chief Justice of India and Justice S.B. Sinha). The appellant, a Protection & Indemnity (P&I) club, had insured the respondent vessel’s owner against various P&I risks and sued in the admiralty jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court for unpaid insurance calls, seeking arrest of the vessel to secure the claim. The dispute turned on whether unpaid insurance premiums qualified as “necessaries” supplied to a ship — a recognised head of admiralty claim under the historical English admiralty statutes the Court traced (the Admiralty Court Act, 1840, the Admiralty Court Act, 1861, and later English case law on “necessaries”). The judgment traces the historical expansion of admiralty jurisdiction from claims giving rise to a maritime lien (such as collision and salvage) to a wider statutory jurisdiction over claims — like necessaries — that carry no lien but still support an action in rem and arrest. The 2017 Act expressly lists “insurance premium (including mutual insurance calls) in respect of the vessel” as a maritime claim under Section 4(1)(s), resolving by statute a question this line of cases had to work out from first principles.

Arrest in Practice: A 2025 Orissa High Court Admiralty Suit

The mechanics of arrest under the 2017 Act can be seen in a recent case before a coastal High Court. In Alphard Maritime Ltd. v. Ocean Jade (IMO: 9660750) (High Court of Orissa at Cuttack, ADMLS No. 2 of 2025, judgment dated 9 July 2025, Justice Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo), the plaintiff filed an admiralty suit expressly invoking the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) Act, 2017. An ex parte interim order directed that the vessel be kept under arrest at Paradip Port, within Indian territorial waters, by the Port Officer, Customs authorities, or other competent authority pending further orders of the Court. The proceedings also involved interlocutory applications — including an application by the defendants under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 for rejection of the plaint, and an application by an intervenor seeking to join the suit — illustrating that an admiralty arrest suit, once filed, typically generates the same kind of interlocutory contest over jurisdiction and maintainability as any other civil suit, layered on top of the vessel’s continuing detention. This is a live illustration of Section 5 arrest procedure operating exactly as the statute frames it — at a coastal port, before a High Court named in Section 2(1)(e), and not before the Allahabad High Court, which has no such jurisdiction to invoke.

Practical Points

Forum matters first. Before any question of the merits of a maritime claim, the threshold question is which of the coastal High Courts under Section 2(1)(e) has jurisdiction — determined chiefly by where the vessel is or will be present within Indian territorial waters.
Arrest is a security device, not a final remedy. An arrested vessel (or its sale proceeds) is held as security pending the outcome of the underlying claim; arrest does not itself decide who wins the dispute.
Not every claim ranks equally. A maritime lien claim (crew wages, personal injury, salvage, statutory port dues, certain tort claims) ranks ahead of a registered mortgage, which in turn ranks ahead of an unsecured maritime claim, when proceeds of an arrested and sold vessel are distributed.
The 2017 Act replaced, not merely supplemented, the old law. The colonial-era admiralty statutes that M.V. Elisabeth worked around no longer apply in India; the current framework is a self-contained Central Act.

Useful Resources

Disclaimer: The information provided on this website is for general legal awareness and educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice, advertisement, or solicitation. No reader should act or refrain from acting based on this information without seeking professional legal counsel. Advocate Akhil Singh and this website are not liable for any actions taken based on the content provided herein.