India Signs Rs 53,866 Crore Deal for 8 Navy-Designed Corvettes, Up From Around Rs 36,000 Crore in 2022

The Ministry of Defence signed contracts worth Rs 53,866.50 crore today, Monday, Nov. 2, for eight Next Generation Corvettes for the Indian Navy. The signing took place at Kartavya Bhawan-2 in New Delhi, with Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh present.

Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) will build five of the ships. Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) will build the other three. Both are state-owned.

The ministry says this is the first project in which the Navy designed the ships in-house and defence public sector shipyards, picked through a competitive process, build them. GRSE was the lowest bidder when commercial bids were opened in May 2025.

The price moved a long way

The project first went before the Defence Acquisition Council in June 2022 at around Rs 36,000 crore. The Cabinet Committee on Security cleared it on October 28, at a reported figure of more than Rs 40,000 crore.

The signed contract value is Rs 53,866.50 crore, well above both the 2022 estimate of around Rs 36,000 crore and the reported CCS figure.

The ministry's announcement does not say what accounts for the difference between the CCS figure and the signed value, or between the signed value and the 2022 estimate. The ministry has not said whether inflation, scope changes, design revisions or the bids themselves drove the increase. It is taxpayer money, and the explanation is still owed.

What the Navy is getting

The ministry calls them corvettes, but they are not small. At 3,800 to 4,000 tonnes, they overlap with smaller frigates, well above the traditional 500 to 2,000 tonne corvette range.

The ships are expected to exceed 30 knots, with a range of 4,000 nautical miles at 14 knots. Each will carry 160 sailors and 21 officers.

The armament includes:

• A 76 mm super rapid gun mount made by BHEL
• Eight surface-to-surface missiles
• 24 anti-missile defence weapons
• Two triple 324 mm torpedo tubes

The sensor suite covers surface, air and fire-control radars, an infrared search and track system, a hull-mounted sonar, an active towed array sonar and a combat management system. That lets the ships operate across air, surface and sub-surface domains.

Replacing an old fleet

The eight vessels are meant to replace the Khukri-class and Kora-class corvettes. INS Kuthar and INS Khanjar remain in service from the Khukri class, along with four Kora-class ships.

The ministry lists their roles as protecting maritime trade routes, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, coastal defence, littoral combat, and maritime surveillance and presence missions.

The first ship is expected to reach the Navy by 2030, according to officials quoted by ANI. That is eight years after the project first appeared before the Defence Acquisition Council.

The jobs and self-reliance pitch

The ministry projects about 72 lakh person-days of employment in the shipyards and another 460 lakh person-days in ancillary industries and MSMEs over the next 10 years. These are the ministry's projections, not results.

It also says the programme will bring together defence shipyards, private industry and MSMEs, and increase the use of Made-in-India materials, equipment and technology. The ministry described the project as "a major step towards achieving Aatmanirbharta in defence manufacturing" and tied it to the Modi government's Make in India push.

The ministry framed the in-house design as the milestone: "the first project in which the ships will be indigenously designed by the Indian Navy and constructed by Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) selected through a competitive process."

What to watch

The contracts are signed, but the ships are not built. The test now is whether GRSE and GSL deliver on a timeline that puts the first corvette in the Navy's hands by 2030, and at the signed price.

The ministry has yet to publish a breakdown of the cost growth from the 2022 estimate, and the Navy's schedule for retiring the Khukri and Kora classes depends on those deliveries.