Rajnath Singh: From 2019’s Rafale Storm to a ₹38,000 Crore Export Record

In May 2019, Rajnath Singh walked into South Block with the Rafale deal controversy still trailing the Defence Ministry’s name and India’s arms bazaar dominated almost entirely by foreign suppliers. Seven years and one shooting war later, the same ministry is citing record indigenous exports and crediting its own weapons for winning a border conflict in under four days. That gap between where the story started and where it stands now is worth examining on its own terms.

Rajnath Singh was sworn into the Council of Ministers on 30 May 2019 and had the Defence portfolio allocated to him the following day, succeeding Nirmala Sitharaman, and was reappointed to the post in June 2024 after the BJP’s third consecutive general election win. Over this period, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has presided over a ministry that shifted its centre of gravity from acquisition to indigenisation, and from procurement announcements to production milestones. Operation Sindoor, in May 2025, became the moment that thesis was tested in actual combat.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh: A Ministry Shaped by Crisis Before Doctrine

The Galwan clash killed 20 Indian soldiers and marked the most serious military confrontation with China in decades. In its aftermath, Singh oversaw phased disengagement talks at Galwan, Pangong Tso and Gogra-Hot Springs, while the ministry simultaneously fast-tracked emergency procurement of ammunition, cold-weather gear and surveillance equipment along the Line of Actual Control. That crisis, more than any five-year plan, hardened the argument inside the ministry that dependence on imported systems carried strategic risk that money alone could not buy away in a crisis.

What followed over the next four years was a steady accumulation of policy instruments rather than a single dramatic reform: successive Positive Indigenisation Lists that barred imports of specified components and platforms, the Defence Acquisition Procedure of 2020, an expanded iDEX innovation programme for startups, and new defence industrial corridors anchored in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Individually, none of these made headlines the way a fighter jet deal does. Together, they built the manufacturing base that Operation Sindoor would later draw on.

Operation Sindoor: The Argument Made in Combat

Launched in the early hours of 7 May 2025 after the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, Operation Sindoor saw Indian forces strike nine terror camps and associated infrastructure across the border, with the wider exchange running through 10 May without escalating into full-scale war — a trajectory TES has traced from Kargil-era procurement failures through to Sindoor-era indigenous capability. At the centre of India’s air defence during the operation was Akashteer, a fully indigenous, automated command-and-control system that coordinated the interception of incoming drones and missiles during Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes on 9 and 10 May, integrating the Air Force’s IACCS and the Navy’s TRIGUN network into a single real-time picture. On the offensive side, Sukhoi-30MKI jets fired the air-launched BrahMos-A cruise missile at Pakistani targets — widely reported as the missile’s combat debut, distinct from its first test flight from a Sukhoi in 2017.

Singh has been explicit that he sees the episode as proof of concept for the ministry’s broader approach. Speaking at the SIDM Annual Conference in October 2025, he pointed to the Akash system, BrahMos and Akashteer as evidence that the successful deployment of India’s indigenous platforms enhanced the country’s reputation both regionally and internationally. Whether that reputational gain, claimed on Rajnath Singh’s watch, translates into durable export contracts is a separate question from whether the systems performed as claimed in combat — the ministry’s own assessment sits in the “official claim” category rather than independently audited battlefield data, though multiple open-source military analysts have corroborated the broad outline of indigenous system performance during the operation.

The Numbers the Ministry Is Citing

Defence exports touched a record ₹38,424 crore in FY 2025-26, marking 62.66 percent growth over the previous fiscal, with Defence Public Sector Undertakings accounting for 54.84 percent of that figure and private industry contributing 45.16 percent — figures Singh posted directly on X and which TES cross-checked against ministry press material. That near-even split is itself a notable shift from a decade ago, when the DPSU-private ratio was heavily skewed toward the public sector. Two defence industrial corridors in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have together attracted investment worth over ₹9,145 crore, with 289 MoUs signed as of October 2025 that the government says could unlock a further ₹66,423 crore in potential opportunities. TES has broken down the FY 2025-26 production numbers by sector separately, for readers who want the fuller picture behind this headline figure.

The government’s own target is ₹3 lakh crore in annual defence production by 2029, a figure Singh has repeated at multiple public events without, so far, an independently published roadmap breaking down how each year between now and then contributes to that total. Readers should treat that number as a stated ambition rather than a scheduled outcome — the pattern with previous targets, including the ₹35,000 crore export goal set for 2025 and later revised upward once it was actually met, suggests the ministry under Rajnath Singh adjusts targets as production outpaces them rather than the reverse.

What the Market Is Pricing In

The investor-relevant story here is less about any single number and more about structural change: a private sector that now accounts for close to half of defence exports was, a decade ago, a marginal player confined largely to sub-systems and components. Companies across the Positive Indigenisation List ecosystem — from large integrators to specialised component makers — have benefited from a procurement environment that increasingly locks out foreign competitors on listed categories. TES has separately tracked how each successive Positive Indigenisation List has reshaped which listed companies see order inflows, and that pattern has held through Operation Sindoor and its aftermath.

None of this should be read as a signal to buy or hold any particular stock. Export figures cited by the ministry are announcements, not settlement data, and the gap between an MoU signed at a defence corridor and revenue booked by a listed company can run into years.

The Next Milestone: Mission Sudarshan Chakra

Singh has outlined a two-phase structure for the programme: a medium-term plan running from 2025 to 2030 and a long-term plan extending from 2030 to 2035, with a dedicated committee tasked with drawing up the detailed execution roadmap. The first phase, expected to be operational by 2028-29, is built around existing systems such as the Integrated Air Command and Control System and the Akashteer network, alongside new interceptor missiles under Project Kusha, which is slated to begin testing long-range interceptors in 2026 ahead of induction by 2030 — the fuller phase-by-phase breakdown is available from IDRW’s defence reporting. TES has covered Project Kusha’s interceptor tiers in more technical depth separately.

The programme is also framed in economic terms: the government links Sudarshan Chakra’s development to its broader ₹3 lakh crore defence production target for 2029, positioning the shield as both a security investment and an industrial one that is meant to reduce import dependence and deepen domestic supply chains. Whether that dual framing survives contact with the scale of the undertaking — a nationwide, AI-enabled interception network is a materially harder engineering problem than the platform-level indigenisation the ministry has managed so far — is the open question for the remainder of this decade.

What to Watch

Will the ₹3 lakh crore 2029 production target actually be met?
Defence production has grown consistently under Rajnath Singh, from roughly ₹40,000 crore in 2014 to ₹1.78 lakh crore in FY 2025-26 by the ministry’s own account, but reaching ₹3 lakh crore within three more years would require the fastest sustained growth rate of the entire period.

Will Project Kusha interceptors be inducted on schedule?
Testing of the long-range interceptor missiles underpinning Mission Sudarshan Chakra’s first phase is due to begin in 2026, with induction targeted for 2030 — a compressed timeline for a system of this complexity that bears watching for slippage.

Does the private-sector export share keep rising?
Private industry’s share of defence exports has climbed to 45.16 percent in FY 2025-26; whether that trend continues or plateaus will indicate whether indigenisation policy is broadening the industrial base or concentrating gains among a small number of established private players.