Ports in India: Major Ports, Port Codes and What “Largest” Means

India has two legal categories of port: major ports, which are administered under the Government of India through the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, and non-major ports (also called minor, intermediate or state ports), which fall under the maritime board or port department of the coastal state they sit in. The major ports are a short, named list. The non-major ports are a long and changing list — it includes large commercial terminals such as Mundra and Pipavav as well as small fishing and coastal jetties — so the count moves as new locations are notified and old ones fall out of use. Do not rely on a number you read in a blog; the current list is published by the Ministry and by the state maritime boards, and that is what an exporter should check.

For a shipper the classification changes less than people assume. It does not decide whether a port is big, deep or modern — several non-major ports outrank major ports on almost any operational measure. What it actually changes is who sets the tariff and the policy, who you escalate to, and where the published scale of rates lives. Customs works the same way at both: the port must be a notified customs station, and it carries a code you will quote on your shipping bill or bill of entry. Scapex keeps a working gateway directory with the code and profile for each Indian gateway we book through.

What “largest” and “busiest” actually mean

This is the question behind most searches on Indian ports, and it has no single answer, because “largest” and “busiest” are not one measure. A port that handles the most tonnage is usually not the one that handles the most containers, and neither is necessarily the one with the deepest water or the biggest land area. Before quoting a ranking, fix the measure.

Every one of these rankings moves. Tonnage and TEU league tables change from year to year with commodity cycles, new terminals coming on stream and capacity added by dredging. Draught changes when a channel is deepened. We deliberately do not print a tonnage or TEU figure on this page, or say which year a ranking held, because a number quoted out of date is worse than none. Check the current position against the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways and the Indian Ports Association, both of which publish traffic data, and against the individual port authority’s own annual figures. If a ranking matters to a commercial decision — a tender response, a hinterland study — take it from those sources on the day you need it.

“Oldest”, “first” and “newest” are similarly slippery. Ancient port sites are a matter of archaeology rather than shipping statistics, and Lothal in Gujarat is the site most often cited there. Among working ports, several claim long continuous history, and “newest” changes every time a greenfield terminal is commissioned. Ennore, now Kamarajar Port, is the one usually cited as the first major port in India incorporated as a company rather than run as a trust.

India’s major ports, by state and coast

State and coast are stable facts and can be stated plainly. These are the ports administered by the Government of India.

Vadhavan in Maharashtra is under development as a further deep-draught gateway. Large non-major ports — Mundra, Pipavav, Hazira, Dhamra, Krishnapatnam, Kattupalli, Gangavaram, Vizhinjam — are absent from this table because they sit under state authority, not because they are small; several are among the most capable terminals in the country.

Port codes: what they are and why yours has to be right

A UN/LOCODE is a five-character code for a place used in trade and transport: two characters for the country, three for the location. Every Indian port code therefore begins IN. The three characters that follow identify the location — sometimes an abbreviation of the name, sometimes derived from an airport or city code, which is why they are not always guessable.

Two cautions. First, Indian customs uses its own six-character station codes in ICEGATE — the UN/LOCODE plus a suffix identifying the specific customs location, such as the container terminal or the ICD — and it is the ICEGATE code, not the plain UN/LOCODE, that belongs in the port-of-loading and port-of-discharge fields of a shipping bill or bill of entry. Second, codes are amended: terminals are added, stations are merged. A wrong or lapsed code produces a rejected filing, a mismatch between your bill of lading and your shipping bill, and in the worst case a delayed drawback or IGST refund because the EGM will not tie back. Confirm the code against ICEGATE or against the current UN/LOCODE list before filing, and see our gateway directory for the code we use for each port we book. If the terminology is unfamiliar, the glossary covers it, and the customs clearance page explains where these fields sit in the filing.

Gujarat: the ports and ICDs that matter from Ahmedabad

Gujarat has the longest coastline of any Indian state and carries a very large share of the country’s cargo across one major port and a long list of state ports under the Gujarat Maritime Board. For an exporter working out of Ahmedabad, five or six names do most of the work.

• Deendayal Port, Kandla — the major port in the state, historically bulk and liquid bulk led, with container and general cargo alongside. Deendayal Port is simply the current name of Kandla; both appear in documents and in older contracts.
• Mundra — a privately developed non-major port in Kachchh and the western container gateway most Ahmedabad shippers use after JNPA, with deep water, rail connectivity and a wide bulk and liquid handling base.
• Pipavav — a privately developed non-major port in Amreli district, container and ro-ro capable, well connected by rail and often the shorter routing for cargo originating in Saurashtra.
• Hazira — a Surat-district terminal complex serving steel, project and container cargo, and the natural gateway for industry in south Gujarat.
• ICD Khodiyar — the inland container depot serving Ahmedabad, used for stuffing, customs clearance at origin and rail movement to the gateway port.
• ICD Sanand — the depot serving the Sanand industrial belt, used heavily by automotive, engineering and general manufacturing consignments.

Which gateway is right is a routing question, not a ranking question: sailing schedule for your trade lane, rail or road cost from your factory, free days offered, and whether you clear at an ICD or at the port. Our Ahmedabad office page sets out how we work these routings, and the gateway directory carries each port’s profile.

Kolkata and Haldia: why a river port behaves differently

Kolkata is India’s only major riverine port. It sits well inland on the Hooghly, not on the open sea, which is exactly why several search queries ask about it. Two physical constraints follow from that position.

The first is draught. The Hooghly carries heavy silt, and the navigable channel and the approach bars shoal continuously. Without sustained dredging, the depth available to a vessel falls, so the port must dredge to keep the channel usable — that is the whole answer to why dredging is essential at Kolkata. Even with dredging, the depth limits the size of vessel that can reach the docks, so larger ships are commonly part-loaded, lightened downstream, or worked at Haldia instead.

The second is tide. Movement up and down the river is tide-dependent: vessels sail on a tidal window with a pilot, and a missed window means waiting for the next one. Anyone planning a Kolkata call should build that into the schedule rather than treating berthing as continuous.

Haldia Dock Complex, downstream and part of the same major port authority, exists largely to answer these constraints: it is closer to the sea and can take vessels that would struggle to reach Kolkata. Cargo for the eastern hinterland is routinely split between the two on that basis.

Dry ports and ICDs, and how they differ from a sea port

A dry port — in Indian usage an inland container depot (ICD), and sometimes called an inland or landlocked port — is a customs-notified facility away from the coast where containers are stuffed, de-stuffed, examined and cleared. It does everything a port does on the documentation and customs side, and nothing a port does on the water side: no vessel ever calls there. The container moves by rail or road between the ICD and the gateway seaport, and the seaport is where it is loaded.

The practical consequence is that clearance can happen at origin. An exporter in Ahmedabad can file and clear at an ICD, seal the container there and rail it to the gateway, instead of trucking a loose consignment to the coast and clearing there. A CFS, by contrast, sits at or near the port and mainly serves LCL consolidation and port-side examination. The distinction, and when each is the cheaper option, is worked through in our explainer on CFS and ICD, and the cost side of sea freight in ocean freight.

Live vessel schedules, berthing and tracking

Vessel schedules, berthing reports, pre-berthing waits and expected time of arrival change by the hour, so there is no useful purpose in reproducing them on a reference page — anything printed here would be wrong by the time you read it. Take them from the source:

• The port authority’s own website — every major port publishes a daily or live berthing and vessel position report: ships at berth, at anchorage, expected. That is the authoritative view of congestion there.
• The terminal operator — at container terminals the operator, not the port authority, publishes vessel windows, cut-offs and gate timings.
• The shipping line — sailing schedules, transit times and rotation belong to the carrier, and the carrier’s schedule is what your booking is against.
• ICEGATE for the customs status of a filing, a different question from where the vessel is.

For a consignment we are handling, use our tracking page or ask your coordinator, who can read the terminal and carrier position together rather than one in isolation.

Talk to Scapex

Scapex Global Forwarding works from Ahmedabad, and routes cargo through Mundra, Pipavav, Hazira, Deendayal and the ICDs at Khodiyar and Sanand as a matter of daily practice, as well as JNPA and the eastern gateways. If you want a view on which gateway suits a particular consignment, or a check on the port code going onto a filing, get in touch.