Fasting PM Modi to open Defexpo as 677 firms ready to showcase arms

CHENNAI: A fasting Prime Minister will inaugurate India’s premier military systems exhibition in Chennai on Thursday, as India seeks to project itself as an emerging defence manufacturing hub and takes baby steps towards becoming a weapons exporter.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said fasting would not stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from coming to Chennai to inaugurate Defexpo-2018. “The PM will be fasting and I will be fasting too,” she said.

The Prime Minister is expected to spend two hours at the show during which he will witness live demonstrations by the army, navy and air force.

BJP MPS are fasting on Thursday to protest the stalemate in Parliament.

Fewer foreign exhibitors are taking part in Defexpo-2018 but the number of Indian firms showcasing their military wares has gone up at the biennial show last staged in Goa.

Of the 677 exhibitors taking part in the show, 523 firms are from India. The figure is far lower than the 1,055 Indian and foreign firms that took part in the exhibition in Goa in 2016.

The exhibition seeks to project the country as an emerging defence manufacturing hub, with a special India pavilion to showcase the combined strength of the public and private sectors in defence production.

An air force request for information to global military contractors for building 110 fighter jets has become a talking point at the show. Almost all potential competitors for that project are attending Defexpo-2018. Defence secretary Sanjay Mitra said the proposed programme to build fighters in the country under the Make in India initiative would not be a repeat of a previous failed hunt to buy fighters.

677 EXHIBITORS FROM INDIA AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES ARE TAKING PART IN THE SHOW THIS YEAR, 378 FIRMS LESS THAN 2016 EXHIBITION