Establishing Of Defence Industrial Corridor

India is fast emerging as a major aerospace and Defence market with requirements of over USD 250 billion by 2025. These Defence requirements are spanning from military aircraft, submarines, helicopters, land systems to weapons and sensors. With the aim of leveraging the economic opportunity present and achieving self-reliance in aerospace and Defencesector the government of India announced setting up of two Defence industrial corridors, one in Uttar Pradesh and the other in Tamil Nadu, during the Union Budget of 2018-19.

Advantage Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh is the fourth largest state in India and the third largest economy within the country. With a population of more than 200 million, UP has the highest number of available labour force and is one of the top five manufacturing states in India. The state also ranks first in terms of number of MSMEs in the country.

Uttar Pradesh DefenceIndustrial Corridor (UP DIC) is an aspirational project that intends to reduce foreign dependency of Indian Aerospace &Defence Sector. It took off to an encouraging start with the announcement of investments worth over Rs. 3700 crores in Defence production at the Meet organized at Aligarh on 11Aug2018. The Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) was made the nodal agency to execute this project in conjunction with various other state agencies. 

The state also intends to establish Common Facility Centres (CFC), Centres of Excellence (CoE) and Skill Development Centres to facilitate in providing best practices, research and development and skill development. Hence, the envisaged corridor not only targets at setting up of manufacturing hubs but also aims at generating employment opportunities to cater to the most populous state in the country.

Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor

The UPDIC is planned across 6 nodes namely – Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi, Agra Aligarh, Chitrakoot, which spreads across Central, East, West region of Uttar Pradesh and along the Golden Quadrilateral connecting Delhi – Kolkata supported by networks of expressways as under:

• Yamuna Expressway
• Agra – Lucknow Expressway
• Purvanchal Expressway
• Bundelkhand Expressway
• Gorakhpur Link Expressway
• Ganga Expressway

Milestones Achieved

• IIT Kanpur and IIT Banaras Hindu University Varanasi have been approved by Government of Uttar Pradesh for establishment of Centre of Excellence related with DefenceIndustrial Corridor and allotted with the amount of Rs. 2.00 Crore each against total approved amount of Rs. 50.00 Crore and Rs. 69.00 Crore respectively in the financial year 2018-19. Technical institutes have started working for CoE..
• Uttar Pradesh Defence and Aerospace Unit and Employment Promotion Policy(First Amendment) 2019 has been published by Government of Uttar Pradesh with the objective of attracting investments in U.P. Defence Industrial Corridor.
• Guideline/Procedure for Allotment of Industrial Plots in Defence Corridor has been published for seamless land allotment procedures.
• 32 MoUs have been signed between UPEIDA and various companies to establish manufacturing units at the nodes for U.P. Defence Industrial Corridor. Land allotment has been initiated for Aligarh and Kanpur nodes.
• Signing of a MoU between UPEDIA and Indian Navy is in pipeline to facilitate identifying problem areas, finding solutions and manufacturing through Indian Industry.

In The Pipeline

• A proposal to establish the Defence Park as a joint venture of UPEIDA and IIT, Kanpur on 30 Acre land proposed in Shivli near the IIT Kanpur has been forwarded to Department of Industrial Development   Govt of UP.
• A proposal for setting-up of CFC at Lucknow is being initiated, to carryout Prototyping, Designing, Skilling and Incubation etc.

Land Banks

Creation of industry ready landbank for setting up of infrastructure for the Defence& Aerospace industries is the first majorpriority for the state. Towards this around 5071.19 Hectares of land, as depicted below,was proposed to be acquired in a phased manner for the corridor.

Details of the current land banks in four nodes are as under (As on 08 Sept 2020)

Connectivity

In addition, the state plans to provide Power supply, Water supply, Road connectivity and land demarcation.