The Defence Ministry Signed ₹53,866.50 Crore Contracts on 2 November 2026 for Eight Navy-Designed Next Generation Corvettes, Five for Garden Reach and Three for Goa Shipyard

The Ministry of Defence signed contracts worth ₹53,866.50 crore on 2 November 2026 for eight Next Generation Corvettes for the Indian Navy. Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) will build five of the ships and Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) three, both state-owned yards, according to the ministry’s release of the same day. The ministry describes it as the first project in which ships designed by the Indian Navy will be built by defence public sector undertakings (state-owned defence companies) selected through a competitive process.

The contracts were signed at Kartavya Bhawan-2 in New Delhi with Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh present. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the government’s release service, posted the announcement at 11:53 am. This article takes every figure about the contracts from that release and credits anything else to the outlet that reported it, because several details differ from one report to the next.

What the contracts cover

The release gives the split, five ships to GRSE in Kolkata and three to GSL in Goa, and the value of the two contracts together. It does not give a price for each yard or a per-ship price.

On equipment it says only that the ships will carry “advanced missiles, weapons and sensor suites” for work in the air, on the surface and below it. The roles it lists are protecting maritime trade routes, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, coastal defence, littoral combat operations (those near the shore), and maritime presence and surveillance.

The release also makes an industrial case. It says the project will bring together defence public sector yards, private shipyards and Indian industrial partners including micro, small and medium enterprises, and that construction is expected to generate about 72 lakh person-days of employment in the shipyards and 460 lakh person-days in ancillary industries over ten years. A person-day is one person working one day. Added together, the two ministry figures come to 532 lakh person-days.

Which figure to use

Several amounts have been attached to this programme, so it helps to separate them.

The signed value is ₹53,866.50 crore, from the PIB release. The Hindu, ANI (as carried by the Tribune), Business Standard and Swarajya give the same number. All India Radio’s report of the signing is headlined “over Rs 53,880 crore” while its text reads “over 53 thousand eight hundred crore rupees”. Neither matches the ministry release, which is the document this article follows.

Before the signing, ANI reported on 29 October that “top government officials” said the Cabinet Committee on Security, led by the Prime Minister, had cleared a deal worth over ₹40,000 crore at a meeting on Wednesday, which was 28 October. Swarajya’s report of 30 October also gives 28 October. Its brief of 2 November says 29 October, and adds that the final contract value “reflects comprehensive procurement costs for the programme”, without a breakdown.

The oldest figure is official. On 6 June 2022 the Defence Acquisition Council, chaired by the Defence Minister, granted an Acceptance of Necessity for Next Generation Corvettes at an estimated cost of about ₹36,000 crore, according to PIB. That release does not say how many ships the estimate covered.

These are numbers from three different stages: an estimate in 2022, a reported clearance in October 2026 and signed contracts. No release or report opened for this article reconciles them, so the article does not try to.

GRSE’s own share is a further point. PSU Watch and Indian Masterminds, in near-identical reports, put GRSE’s five-ship contract at about ₹32,000 crore. The ministry release gives only the combined figure, so the split stays unconfirmed here.

A design the Navy drew itself

The release says the ships “will be indigenously designed by the Indian Navy”. The 2022 PIB release said the corvettes would be built to a “new in-house design” of the Navy using the latest shipbuilding technology. The Tribune’s explainer of 2 November says the Navy’s design directorate keeps control of the design, including how sensors and weapons are integrated and how the ship can be upgraded later.

The word “first” is the ministry’s, and it comes with conditions: Navy-designed ships, built by state-owned companies, picked competitively. The release does not compare the project with earlier Navy designs, and this article has not checked that comparison.

The competition itself is reported only in news coverage. Swarajya wrote on 30 October that GRSE was the lowest bidder and would build five ships, and that GSL would build the other three “at matching unit cost”. PSU Watch also calls GRSE the lowest bidder.

Size and equipment: two descriptions

The ministry release gives no dimensions, speed or weapons list. Two sets of figures are in circulation, and they differ.

The Tribune’s explainer and PSU Watch both describe a ship 127 metres long with a beam (width) of 17.6 metres, a “specified deadweight tonnage” of 4,950 tonnes, a top speed of 26 knots and endurance of 14 days at sea without resupply. They give the crew as 11 officers and 139 sailors, and the propulsion as a combined diesel and gas turbine arrangement (CODAG-CC) driving two controllable-pitch propellers, whose blade angle can be changed to control speed. Both say the ships will operate helicopters.

The same two reports list the proposed fit. For weapons it is medium-range anti-ship missiles, MRSAM (medium-range surface-to-air missiles), 324 mm torpedo tubes, an OTO Melara 76 mm gun, an AK-630 close-in weapon system and 12.7 mm stabilised remote-controlled guns tied to an electro-optical fire control system. For sensors it is an electro-optical infrared search and track system and a multi-function surveillance, track and guidance radar called MFSTAR. The word “proposed” is theirs.

ANI, quoting officials on 29 October, and Swarajya describe a different ship: about 2,000 tonnes, with a top speed of about 30 knots. Deadweight tonnage, the weight a ship can carry, and displacement, the weight of the ship itself, are different measures, so the two sets cannot be compared directly. None of the reports says which description matches the final design, and the ministry release gives neither.

Two yards already busy with Navy orders

Both yards are building Navy ships to Indian designs now. A PIB release of 30 March 2023 records contracts worth about ₹9,781 crore for 11 Next Generation Offshore Patrol Vessels, seven at GSL and four at GRSE. PIB’s releases show Shreyas launched at GRSE on 10 October 2026 and Srishti at GSL on 27 October 2026. tuput’s account of the Shreyas launch has the dates and the programme’s size, and the list of nine ships commissioned in 2026 shows how many Indian-built ships joined the fleet this year.

The release names private shipyards among the project’s partners. Larsen and Toubro’s Kattupalli yard, a private one, had a Navy ship enter service in October, covered in the INS Samarthak article. For the wider shift from buying weapons abroad to building them, see India’s defence industry, from importer to maker.

What comes next

The Tribune and Swarajya both say the corvettes are meant to replace the ageing Khukri and Kora classes. The release gives no delivery schedule. ANI and Swarajya report that the Navy expects the first of the eight ships by 2030, and Swarajya adds that the shipyards are looking at ways to speed up delivery. As of 2 November 2026, no official figure for the delivery of any of the eight has been published.