Ports
& Shipping

The largest new port project of the period is Vadhavan, in Palghar district, Maharashtra. The Union Cabinet approved it on 19 June 2024 at a cost of ₹76,220 crore, including land. It is being developed by a special purpose vehicle of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (74%) and the Maharashtra Maritime Board (26%), with a planned capacity of 298 million tonnes a year. The Prime Minister laid its foundation stone on 30 August 2024.

The Major Ports themselves are governed by the Major Port Authorities Act, 2021, which came into force on 3 November 2021 and replaced the Major Port Trusts Act, 1963, reconstituting each port trust as a Major Port Authority.

The Sagarmala Programme, launched in 2015, groups port modernisation, new ports, port connectivity, port-linked industrialisation and coastal community development. As of 24 March 2026 it comprised 845 projects with an estimated cost of ₹6.06 lakh crore, of which 315 projects worth ₹1.57 lakh crore had been completed, 210 were under implementation and 320 were at the planning stage.

In June 2025 the Sagarmala Development Company was restructured as Sagarmala Finance Corporation Ltd, a non-banking financial company for the maritime sector.

On 31 March 2023 he launched Sagar-Setu, the mobile application of the National Logistics Portal (Marine), which brings port-related services for traders and shipping lines onto one platform.

International benchmarks cited by the ministry include the World Bank's Container Port Performance Index 2023, in which nine Indian ports were placed in the global top 100, and the Logistics Performance Index 2023, in which India ranked 38th of 139 countries.

He launched the Harit Sagar Green Port Guidelines in New Delhi on 10 May 2023, setting a framework for Major Ports to reduce carbon emissions and waste discharge. At Deendayal Port, Kandla, electrolysers for a 1 MW green hydrogen plant were flagged off on 18 March 2025; the steel for the first all-electric green tug for the port was cut on 3 December 2025 under the Green Tug Transition Programme.

In 2025 Parliament passed five laws that replaced much of India's older shipping legislation, among them the Merchant Shipping Act, 2025 and the Indian Ports Act, 2025, which replaced the Indian Ports Act of 1908. Under the new merchant shipping law the Directorate General of Shipping has been renamed the Directorate General of Maritime Administration.

On the Indian-flagged fleet, he told the National Shipping Board's first ‘Sagar Samvad’ on 25 August 2026 of a plan to add 100 vessels in five years. After disruption to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, an inter-ministerial review on 29 April 2026 considered a plan to add 62 vessels in 2026–27.