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The Centre is in an advanced stage of creating two more defence industrial corridors—one in Maharashtra and the other in Assam—in the coming months, those who are aware of the development told BharatShakti.
Currently, two defence corridors, one each in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, are functional. They were created in 2018 and have made considerable progress in the past six years.
With increasing emphasis on self-reliance or atmanirbharta in defence design, development and manufacturing, it is now felt necessary to establish two more focused hubs. Last week, India announced that its annual defence production surged to an all-time high of Rs 1,50,590 crore in FY 2024-25, marking an 18 per cent jump from the previous year’s Rs 1.27 lakh crore and an impressive 90 per cent increase since FY 2019-20.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh hailed the achievement as a “clear indicator of India’s strengthening defence industrial base,” crediting the Department of Defence Production, Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), public manufacturers, and private industry for their role in the milestone. DPSUs and other public sector units contributed about 77 per cent of the total output, while the private sector accounted for 23 per cent, up from 21 per cent a year earlier, reflecting its expanding footprint in the defence ecosystem.
The spadework for establishing the two new defence corridors is currently ongoing, with intense discussion between the Department of Defence Production (DDP) under the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and officials of the Maharashtra and Assam governments.
In Maharashtra, the proposal is to create three clusters to build on the existing industrial base in those areas. One cluster is likely to be established between Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad) and Ahilyanagar (Ahmednagar), and Pune, another around Nashik and Dhule, and the third at Nagpur, those who are working on the proposal said.
The proposed location(s) in Assam is not yet known but Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has been actively pursuing the proposal with the Centre since January earlier this year. Sarma met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi in May and sought the creation of the defence industrial corridor in Assam. The Chief Minister has been quoted as saying,
“This will fortify the needs of our armed forces in the eastern frontier and strengthen the Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ vision’ and create new economic opportunities in the Northeast,” after the meeting with Singh.
The Uttar Pradesh Defence Corridor spans six nodes: Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Chitrakoot, Aligarh, and Agra. The corridor is strategically located to leverage the state’s existing industrial infrastructure, skilled workforce, and connectivity, while the Tamil Nadu Defence Corridor connects five main nodes: Chennai, Hosur, Coimbatore, Salem, and Tiruchirappalli (Trichy). This corridor leverages Tamil Nadu’s established manufacturing base, skilled manpower, and port connectivity.
In 2017-18, the government had declared its intent to create special defence corridors to:
- Boost Indigenous Production: Enhance the domestic manufacturing capacity for defence hardware, reducing import dependency.
- Promote Innovation: Encourage research and development in cutting-edge defence technologies.
- Create Jobs: Generate employment opportunities in manufacturing, engineering, and allied sectors.
- Foster Collaboration: Bring together public sector undertakings (PSUs), private industry, startups, and academia.
- Attract Investment: Draw both foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic capital into the sector.
- Export Potential: Position India as a global exporter of defence products and technologies.
The experience of the existing defence corridors in north and south India and the steady progress they have made so far appears to have propelled the new initiative to create two more defence corridors in the western and eastern regions of the country.
Nitin A. Gokhale
Author, thought leader and one of South Asia's leading strategic analysts, Nitin A. Gokhale has forty years of rich and varied experience behind him as a conflict reporter, Editor, author and now a media entrepreneur who owns and curates two important digital platforms, BharatShakti.in and StratNewsGlobal.com focusing on national security, strategic affairs and foreign policy matters.
At the beginning of his long and distinguished career, Gokhale has lived and reported from India’s North-east for 23 years, writing and analysing various insurgencies in the region, been on the ground at Kargil in the summer of 1999 during the India-Pakistan war, and also brought live reports from Sri Lanka’s Eelam War IV between 2006-2009.
Author of over a dozen books on wars, insurgencies and conflicts, Gokhale relocated to Delhi in 2006, was Security and Strategic Affairs Editor at NDTV, a leading Indian broadcaster for nine years, before launching in 2015 his own digital properties.
An alumni of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, Gokhale now writes, lectures and analyses security and strategic matters in Indo-Pacific and travels regularly to US, Europe, South and South-East Asia to speak at various international seminars and conferences.
Gokhale also teaches at India’s Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), the three war colleges, India's National Defence College, College of Defence Management and the intelligence schools of both the R&AW and Intelligence Bureau.
He tweets at @nitingokhale
