DefExpo-2022 will be held in Gandhinagar

India’s flagship military exhibition, DefExpo, will be held at Gandhinagar in Gujarat in March 2022, with a focus on projecting the country as an emerging defence manufacturing hub. The biennial show will be held in Gandhinagar from March 11-13, the department of defence production announced on Friday. DefExpo was traditionally held in Delhi until 2014 after which it has seen a string of new venues - Goa (2016), Chennai (2018) and Lucknow (2020). The venue was shifted to Goa when late Manohar Parrikar was the defence minister, it moved to Chennai when Nirmala Sitharaman held the portfolio and it was staged in Lucknow with Rajnath Singh as the defence minister.

From raising foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence manufacturing to creating a separate budget for buying locally made military hardware and notifying two lists of weapons/equipment that cannot be imported, the government has taken a raft of measures to boost self-reliance in the defence sector over the last two years.The first list included artillery guns, missile destroyers, ship-borne cruise missiles, light combat aircraft, light transport aircraft, long-range land-attack cruise missiles, communication satellites, basic trainer aircraft, multi-barrel rocket launchers, a variety of radars, assault rifles, sniper rifles, mini-UAVs and different types of ammunition.The second list consists of several military systems including specified types of helicopters, next-generation corvettes, airborne early warning and Control (AEW&C) systems, tank engines, medium power radar for mountains, medium-range surface to air missile systems and anti-material rifles.