Planning has stalled for building new indigenous warships for the Indian Navy. This after Defence Minister A K Antony, rattled by protests from private shipbuilders, scuttled a proposed joint venture (JV) on September 26 between public sector shipbuilder, Mazagon Dock Ltd, Mumbai (MDL) and the private Dahej-based Pipavav Shipyard; and announced a freeze on warship building JVs until a formal policy was formulated.
That effectively places all new warship projects on hold. Senior MoD (ministry of defence) officials point out that, with defence shipyard capacities already filled by ongoing warship projects, JVs were intended to create fresh capacities by coupling the public defence shipyards’ expertise and experience, with the large unutilised capacities of India’s new private sector warship builders.
But with these JVs now on hold, at least until a new policy is finalised, no Indian shipyard has both the capacity and expertise to build a new line of warships.
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