UP Defence Corridor Hits Another Milestone: UPEIDA Board Gives Approval To Start Bidding Process For Defence Testing Infrastructure

The Uttar Pradesh Defence Corridor has reached another milestone with the state's expressway authority, which is also the nodal agency for the project, giving its approval for starting the bidding process online for the creation of defence testing infrastructure in the state.

The approval was granted at the seventy-eighth board meeting of the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Development Authority (UPEIDA) chaired by the chief executive officer and infrastructure and industrial development commissioner Arvind Kumar.

"Approval was obtained from the board of directors for the notification for land in all six nodes of the UP Defence Industrial Corridor project in Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Chitrakoot, and Jhansi as an industrial development zone.," the Hindustan Times reported.

Under the Defence Testing Infrastructure Scheme (DTIS) (UAS, Mechanical and Material and Communication Testing Facility), defence equipment testing facilities will come up in the state to facilitate the development of a defence manufacturing ecosystem.

The center has allocated Rs 400 crore for the scheme.

According to the Hindustan Times report, "defence testing infrastructure hub is in three areas of the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor and five areas of the Tamil Nadu Defence Industrial Corridor."

The defence corridor in Uttar Pradesh, announced in 2018, has six nodes — Aligarh, Agra, Lucknow, Kanpur, Chitrakoot, and Jhansi. The state government has acquired around 1,600 hectares of land in these nodes.

Uttar Pradesh already has three Hindustan Aeronautics Limited manufacturing units, nine Ordnance Factories, Bharat Electronics Limited, and other state-owned companies that are part of the defence sector.

In recent years, Kanpur has attracted investment in defence manufacturing from the private sector. Recently, the Lohia Group invested nearly Rs 100 crore in a greenfield aerospace and defence hardware plant in Kanpur.

MKU, a defence manufacturing firm headquartered in Kanpur, has been supplying equipment to the Indian Army since the last 1980s and, more recently, to militaries, paramilitaries, and police services in other countries.

Among other things, the company is manufacturing ballistic helmets for the Indian Army at its unit Malwan in Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur district, a 40-minute drive from Kanpur and a little over 130 km away from Chitrakoot, one of the six nodes of the corridor.

According to a Business Standard report last month, over 1,600 hectares of land has been acquired for the defence corridor and about 30 companies have been allocated land for setting up their units.

The construction of the BrahMos missile unit in Lucknow as part of the defence corridor is likely to begin in October this year. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, a Member of Parliament from Lucknow, laid the foundation stone for the BrahMos unit in December last year.

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