India, surrounded by Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean with a 7500 km long coastline is inhabited by nearly 25% of population within the vicinity of 50 km towards the coast (Nayak, Chandramohan, & Desai, 1992). Indian coastal states support national economy with developmental activities (largest in the South Asian Region) and numerous marine resources located in 2.02 million km2 Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). At another hand, these states are under extreme pressure of natural hazards because of vulnerable geographical locations (Alcántara-Ayala, 2002; Smith & Petley, 2008) and anthropogenic development (Nair & Gopinathan, 1981; Ramesh, Lakshmi, George, & Purvaja, 2015). India harbors some of the world’s fastest growing coastal megacities such as Mumbai and Kolkata, with Chennai joining the league shortly. The implications of coastal cities are pollution and natural hazards which are inevitable and the effect can be destructive in urban coastal regions with huge population (Cenci et al., 2015; Nayak et al., 1992; Newton, Carruthers, & Icely, 2012). Specifically (Vaz, 2014), reports that in Mumbai there is observed transformation of 36% of mangrove eco-system area to urban land since 1973 due to urbanization. Along with urbanization there is industrial belt development along the Indian coasts causing effluent discharges from cities and industrial belts (Datta, Chakraborty, Jaiswar, & Ziauddin, 2010; Ramachandran, 1999; Shirodkar et al., 2009). On the east coast, increased metal concentration in the coastal waters of Pondicherry as reported by Govindasamy and Azariah (1999) was a result of the effluent discharges of nearly 16 major and minor industries. 1.1. Coastal regulations in India Coastal area classification for developmental activities in urban areas is a challenging task due to conflicts among associated stakeholders. Different countries have various mechanism to manage their coastal resources with the help of policies. These policies are aimed at creating balance between human development and coastal biodiversity. Similar efforts have been made by State and Central Government in India to direct the development in the coastal areas using regulatory frameworks. One of the most prevailing regulation is Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) policy (Krishnamurthy, DasGupta, Chatterjee, & Shaw, 2014). The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF & CC) had issued the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 1991 under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 and there have been continuous amendments in this notification since then. The CRZ notification was issued with a vision of sustainable development and conservation of marine resources. Present coastal regulations (CRZ, 2011) has issues related to implementation at administrative level and violations at private/government level. Considerable variations have been observed in the application and interpretation of coastal regulations in various Indian states (Sonak, Pangam, & Giriyan, 2008). Lack of clarity and definitions in CRZ regulations has led to subjective interpretations. This subjectivity stems from the basic definitions used to classify the coastal areas. For example, in prevailing CRZ regulation, areas come in CRZ-I are ecologically subtle areas like mangroves (if area more than 1000 square meters, a buffer area of 50 m shall be provided), corals, sand dunes, salt marshes, bird & turtle nesting grounds, horse shoe crab habitats, sea grass beds, mudflats and the area between Low Tide Line and High Tide Line and it’s hard to demarcate these areas independently.