As the shipping sector worldwide contracts, the DSS has a challenge in its hands where maintenance of modern Vessels becomes much more complex than what it started from almost half a century ago. The ageing DSS Fleet is prone to frequent breakdowns, involving huge operational expenses and disruption of services. The DSS plans to expand its Fleet strength by acquiring modern vessels with improved passenger comfort and reduce travel time.

While there is an emphasis to shift to air services to link the Mainland-Island Sector, the Inter-Island and Foreshore Sector will rely upon shipping primarily due to cost effectiveness and ability to transfer bulk numbers of tourists and passengers by its fleet of ships.

Worldwide shipping trends indicate that chartering of vessels is preferable to ownership due to large overhead and infrastructure costs. The DSS has experimented with chartering vessels and the results have been encouraging.

Although DSS is the owner of the 66 vessels held in inventory as on date, the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) has given technical support being the DOC holder for the DSS for the last 40 years. Today, a subsidiary office of the SCI operates in Port Blair and provides maintenance, management and certification services to the A&N Administration and is controlled by the DG Shipping and the Ministry of Shipping.

In order to undertake the repair & maintenance of Foreshore, Harbour, Utility vessels and new vessels under acquisition the department proposes to modernize & up-grade the Dry-docks and workshops with modern machineries & equipments to meet the repair requirement of newly acquired vessels. The machineries & equipments in the existing workshop have either become obsolete or outdated & needs replacements. In this direction M/s Cochin Shipyard Ltd. (CSL) has been entrusted to undertake a feasibility Study and the work is under progress.

Larger Vessels which operate in the Mainland and Inter-Island sector are sent to CSL for repair/Annual Passenger Survey (APS) as adequate repair facilities are not available at Port Blair. A tripartite MoU has been concluded between CSL, SCI and DSS for timely repair/APS of Mainland-Island and Inter-Island vessels.

The Marine Dockyard was established in the year 1893. It is the only Dockyard facility available in the Islands and caters to the requirement of Navy, Coast Guard and other private sector in addition to the requirement of Administration vessels.

Up-gradation of the existing Ticketing System : Migration of On-premise STARS infrastructure to NICSI Cloud platform through CRIS has been completed. The modernization will enable web-based enquiry and web-based ticketing to facilitate tourism and the island public.

The Chief Secretary (A&N Islands), Shri. Keshav Chandra, IAS in presence of Secretary Shipping and Capt. Atul Kumar Singh [Director of Shipping Services] in a brief function on 17th April 2023, launched the Directorate's new website with STARS E-Ticketing Portal.

The new online reservation system will offer convenient and hassle free booking options to the passengers and payments can be made through various options available on the website.