The Modi government has asked the Shinzo Abe administration whether it would be interested in the over Rs 50,000 crore project to build six stealth submarines in India.
With Japan recently ending its decades old self-imposed arms export embargo, New Delhi has forwarded “a proposal” to Tokyo to “consider the possibility” of making its latest diesel-electric Soryu-class submarines in India, sources in the Defence Ministry said.
The Modi government wants to kick-start Project-75-I, which has not taken off due to politico-bureaucratic apathy since being accorded “acceptance of necessity” in November 2007, in the backdrop of India’s rapidly depleting conventional submarine fleet.