In 1887, the British placed a wick lamp inside a fourth-order optic on the roof of the Olakkaneeswar Temple at Mahabalipuram and called it a lighthouse. The temple was already more than a thousand years old. The coast below it had been a working port under the Pallavas in the seventh century AD, trading with Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean, where a log fire had once done the same job for approaching vessels.
That single location contains the whole of the story the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways told in a backgrounder on 10 October 2026, titled From Beacons to Landmarks. India has 205 lighthouses along a coastline of over 11,000 km. What they are for has changed twice — once in the nineteenth century, and again in the last decade.
The law changed its name, and that is the news
For ninety-four years India's lighthouses were governed by the Lighthouse Act, 1927. When that Act was framed, British India had 32 lighthouses. There are now 205, plus a lightship.
In July 2021 Parliament passed the Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021, which repealed and replaced the 1927 statute. The change of title is not cosmetic, and it is the most examinable fact in this topic. The old Act regulated lighthouses — fixed towers carrying lights. The new Act regulates aids to navigation, a category that includes the towers but also much else:
- It applies to the whole of India, including territorial waters, the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone.
- It provides for vessel traffic services — the shore-based monitoring and direction of ship movements in congested waters.
- It provides for the training and certification of operators of aids to navigation.
- It provides for the marking of wrecks.
A statute written for lamp-keepers could not carry any of that. The legal reframing followed a functional one: a lighthouse stopped being a light and became a node in a navigation system.
The institution that runs it is the Directorate General of Lighthouses and Lightships (DGLL), a subordinate office of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways — not, as candidates often guess, of the Navy or the Ministry of Defence. Its headquarters is at Noida, and it works through nine regional directorates: Gandhidham, Jamnagar, Mumbai, Goa, Cochin, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata and Port Blair.
One division of responsibility is worth knowing because it is a classic federal split. General aids to navigation — those serving the coast and shipping at large — are DGLL's charge under the 2021 Act. Local aids, serving a particular harbour or channel, are maintained by State maritime organisations: port trusts and State maritime boards.
The lighthouse as a data station
The detail in the backgrounder that most readers will skim past is the one that explains the new statute. 87 Automatic Identification System (AIS) shore stations have been installed on lighthouses along the Indian coast.
AIS is a ship-and-shore data broadcast system mandated under SOLAS, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. A fitted vessel continuously transmits its identity, position, course and speed; shore stations receive those transmissions and build a live picture of traffic. Its stated purpose is situational awareness — safety of navigation and efficient management of shipping traffic.
Why put the receivers on lighthouses? Because the problem of where to site a coastal sensor network was solved in the nineteenth century. Lighthouses already sit at the points that matter — headlands, river mouths, hazardous approaches — spaced along the entire coast, on government land, with power, access and staff. Reusing them as AIS sites is the cheapest coastal surveillance India could possibly have built.
And this is where the function quietly becomes dual-use. A continuous picture of who is off your coast is a safety instrument and a maritime domain awareness instrument at the same time. India learned the cost of not having one in November 2008, and the institutional response ran through coastal radar chains, fishing-vessel registration and the machinery discussed in the Bureau of Port Security and India's coastal security. The lighthouse network is part of that answer without being described as such.
Why a light still matters when every ship has GPS
This is the question a sharp reader should ask, and the answer is the best reason to understand this topic rather than memorise it.
Satellite navigation is better than a lighthouse in every respect except one: it can fail, and it can be made to fail. A global navigation satellite signal is weak by the time it reaches a receiver, which makes it jammable, and it carries no inherent proof of origin for civil users, which makes it spoofable. Receivers break. Power fails. Signals are degraded by space weather.
A masonry tower with a light of known characteristic, in a charted position, is immune to all of that. It cannot be jammed, it cannot be spoofed, and a mariner needs no equipment to use it beyond eyes and a chart. The same tower is radar-conspicuous. This is why SOLAS obliges contracting governments to provide aids to navigation and why no maritime nation has switched its lights off: the visual aid is the independent layer in a redundant system, and redundancy is the entire design principle of safety at sea.
So the correct way to describe the modern lighthouse is not as a charming survival. It is the analogue fallback underneath a digital system, which now also hosts the digital system's sensors.
What has actually been modernised
The technology inside the towers has moved further than the towers suggest.
Every lighthouse in the country is solar-powered. That is a more consequential sentence than it reads, because lighthouses are among the most remote installations the Indian state maintains — on islands, headlands and reefs, often without road access or a grid connection. For such sites off-grid solar with battery storage is not a gesture towards renewables; it is simply the cheapest and most reliable option available, and it removes the fuel logistics that historically defined lighthouse-keeping.
Two stations in the backgrounder show the whole arc of that change. At Samiyani Island in Gujarat, an oil lamp gave way to a solar-powered electronic flasher and then to an LED lantern in 2016. At Jodiya, a solar-operated flashing light was replaced by a high-intensity LED lantern in 2021. Oil flame, to solar flasher, to LED, in one lifetime of a building.
The tourism pivot, read carefully
The headline figures are striking. Lighthouse tourism rose from about 4 lakh visitors in 2014 to 18.63 lakh in 2024-25 — a rise of roughly four and a half times. 75 of the 205 lighthouses have been developed as tourism destinations, among them Mandvi and Dwarka in Gujarat, Tadri in Karnataka, Pamban in Tamil Nadu and Vizhinjam in Kerala. A digital ticketing portal under DGLL has brought the visitor experience onto a common platform. Dedicated lighthouse museums operate at Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Alappuzha, Kannur, Muttom, Dwarka and Gopnath, and station surroundings have been developed with pathways, gardens and amphitheatres. The employment effect is local and real — hotels, restaurants, transport, guides, shops and artisans around sites that previously drew nobody.
Two cautions belong in any honest account.
The first is a category question. A lighthouse is a navigational asset owned by a safety regulator. Managing it for footfall introduces an objective that can pull against its primary function, and the failure mode is specific: a station that becomes an excellent museum and an indifferent light. The backgrounder is careful about this, and the care is worth noticing — it states that the first purpose remains unchanged, and places the new chapter around that enduring role rather than in place of it. That ordering is the correct one, and it is the sentence to quote.
The second is about the numbers. 18.63 lakh visitors across 75 developed sites averages roughly 25,000 a year per site, or about seventy a day. That is a healthy heritage circuit and not a mass-tourism phenomenon, and it should be described as the former. The growth rate is the impressive part, not the absolute scale — and the comparison to make is with purpose-built maritime heritage investment such as Lothal's maritime complex, where the asset had to be created rather than repurposed. Lighthouses are cheaper heritage precisely because the state already owns and staffs them.
The heritage content is better than the promotion
Left to itself, the Mahabalipuram entry is the most interesting thing in the document, and it is a gift for an answer on Indian maritime history.
The Pallavas developed Mamallapuram as an important port in the seventh century AD for trade across Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean. A log fire served as the guide. The first conventional lighthouse came in 1887, a wick lamp set in a fourth-order optic on the roof of the Olakkaneeswar Temple. The light source was modified in 2004 to a cluster of three 150 W metal halide lamps. The present light is a 26-metre circular stone masonry tower.
Thirteen centuries of the same function at the same point, through a temple, a colonial optic and a halide lamp. The coast did not change; the technology did. That continuity is the argument for treating lighthouses as heritage at all, and it is considerably more persuasive than visitor statistics. It also sits naturally inside the wider programme of port-led development under Sagarmala and the Maritime India Vision, where the coast is treated as infrastructure and history at once.
🔑 Revision block
- What: PIB backgrounder From Beacons to Landmarks, 10 October 2026, on India's changing lighthouse story.
- Scale: coastline over 11,000 km; 205 lighthouses (plus a lightship).
- Statute: the Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021 repealed and replaced the Lighthouse Act, 1927 — framed when British India had only 32 lighthouses.
- Scope of the 2021 Act: whole of India including territorial waters, continental shelf and EEZ; provides for vessel traffic services, training and certification of operators, and marking of wrecks.
- Institution: Directorate General of Lighthouses and Lightships (DGLL), a subordinate office of the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways; HQ Noida; nine regional directorates — Gandhidham, Jamnagar, Mumbai, Goa, Cochin, Chennai, Visakhapatnam, Kolkata, Port Blair.
- Division: general aids to navigation = DGLL; local aids = State maritime organisations (ports, State maritime boards).
- AIS: 87 Automatic Identification System shore stations installed on lighthouses; AIS is a ship-and-shore data broadcast system under SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea), for situational awareness and traffic management.
- Why lights persist: satellite navigation can be jammed, spoofed or fail; a charted tower of known characteristic is an independent, equipment-free layer in a redundant system.
- Modernisation: all lighthouses are solar-powered; Samiyani Island went oil lamp → solar flasher → LED (2016); Jodiya upgraded to high-intensity LED (2021).
- Tourism: about 4 lakh visitors (2014) → 18.63 lakh (2024-25); 75 lighthouses developed — Mandvi and Dwarka (Gujarat), Tadri (Karnataka), Pamban (Tamil Nadu), Vizhinjam (Kerala); digital ticketing portal; museums at Chennai, Mahabalipuram, Alappuzha, Kannur, Muttom, Dwarka, Gopnath.
- Mahabalipuram: Pallava port of the seventh century AD trading with Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean; log fire; first conventional light 1887, a wick lamp in a fourth-order optic on the Olakkaneeswar Temple roof; metal halide cluster in 2004; present tower 26 m, circular stone masonry.
- Exam hook: the Act was renamed because the function changed — from a tower with a lamp to a node in a navigation and surveillance network. The first purpose, navigation, remains unchanged.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021 replaced which earlier statute? (a) The Lighthouse Act, 1927 (b) The Indian Ports Act, 1908 (c) The Merchant Shipping Act, 1958 (d) The Coasting Vessels Act, 1838
→ (a) The 1927 Act was framed when British India had only 32 lighthouses, against 205 today, and could not cover vessel traffic services or wreck marking.
Q2. The Directorate General of Lighthouses and Lightships functions under the: (a) Ministry of Defence (b) Ministry of Home Affairs (c) Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (d) Ministry of Earth Sciences
→ (c) It is a subordinate office of that Ministry, headquartered at Noida with nine regional directorates.
Q3. The Automatic Identification System (AIS) installed on 87 Indian lighthouses is mandated under: (a) UNCLOS (b) SOLAS (c) MARPOL (d) The Chicago Convention
→ (b) SOLAS is the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. MARPOL deals with marine pollution and the Chicago Convention with civil aviation.
Q4. Under the 2021 Act, local aids to navigation serving a particular harbour are maintained by: (a) The DGLL directly (b) The Indian Navy (c) The Indian Coast Guard (d) State maritime organisations such as ports and State maritime boards
→ (d) DGLL is responsible for general aids to navigation; local aids fall to State maritime organisations.
Q5. Lighthouse tourism in India rose from about 4 lakh visitors in 2014 to: (a) 18.63 lakh in 2024-25 (b) 4.5 crore in 2024-25 (c) 7.2 lakh in 2024-25 (d) 92 lakh in 2024-25
→ (a) Seventy-five lighthouses have been developed as tourism destinations, with a digital ticketing portal under DGLL.
Q6. The principal reason visual aids to navigation are retained despite satellite navigation is that: (a) Satellite navigation is not permitted in territorial waters (b) Satellite signals can be jammed, spoofed or fail, while a charted tower cannot (c) Lighthouses are cheaper to operate than receivers (d) Indian ships are not fitted with satellite receivers
→ (b) The visual aid is the independent layer in a redundant system, usable without any equipment and conspicuous to radar.
Q7. The first conventional lighthouse at Mahabalipuram was established in 1887 by placing a wick lamp: (a) On a purpose-built iron tower (b) In a lightship moored offshore (c) Inside a fourth-order optic on the roof of the Olakkaneeswar Temple (d) At the summit of the Shore Temple
→ (c) The port had been developed by the Pallavas in the seventh century AD, where a log fire previously guided vessels.
Q8. Which of the following is not provided for by the Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021? (a) Vessel traffic services (b) Training and certification of operators of aids to navigation (c) Marking of wrecks (d) Registration and licensing of fishing vessels
→ (d) Fishing-vessel registration sits elsewhere. The 2021 Act extends to territorial waters, the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone.
Q9. The power source now used across India's lighthouses is: (a) Solar (b) Diesel generation (c) Grid electricity with diesel standby (d) Wind
→ (a) All lighthouses are solar-powered — the cheapest and most reliable option at remote, often off-grid sites.
Q10. AIS shore stations were sited on lighthouses principally because: (a) Lighthouses are the tallest structures on the Indian coast (b) Lighthouses already occupy the coastal points that matter, with land, power and access (c) The Act requires AIS to be co-located with a light (d) AIS cannot function at sea level
→ (b) Headlands, river mouths and hazardous approaches were already identified and built on in the nineteenth century, which made them the cheapest available sensor sites.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Maritime and institutional questions appear steadily in CDS and OTA papers, and this topic sits at the junction of three reliable areas: legislation, administrative structure and heritage.
The first hook is the Act and its predecessor. The Marine Aids to Navigation Act, 2021 repealed the Lighthouse Act, 1927. Papers love repeal-and-replace pairs because they are unambiguous, and this one has an attractive supporting fact — 32 lighthouses then, 205 now — that explains why the law changed and makes it memorable.
The second is the parent ministry, and it is the commonest error in this area. The DGLL is under Ports, Shipping and Waterways. Candidates reach for Defence because the subject is coastal and the function feels naval, and the distractor is written precisely for that instinct. Keep the maritime institutions separate: DGLL under Ports and Shipping, the Coast Guard under Defence, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services under Earth Sciences.
The third is the convention set. SOLAS for safety of life at sea, MARPOL for pollution, UNCLOS for the law of the sea, and the Chicago Convention for aviation. AIS belongs to SOLAS. One question in this family appears in most papers, and it is free marks.
The fourth, and the one that earns a written answer, is the functional argument. Being able to explain why a lighthouse survives the satellite — jamming, spoofing, failure, and the principle of redundancy — and why AIS was mounted on lighthouses rather than on new towers, demonstrates that you understand infrastructure as a system of layers. Add the Mahabalipuram continuity from a Pallava port through an 1887 wick lamp to a 26-metre tower, and you have both the mechanism and the history in one answer.
Preparing for CDS/OTA? With any institution question, fix the parent ministry first — it is the most commonly tested and most commonly guessed detail. Build the base with our CDS/OTA study material and the polity section, follow the daily CDS current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by The Cavalier Faculty Desk — History & Culture, at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.