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Goa Shipyard Limited formally handed over ICGS Ajit (Yard 1277), a Fast Patrol Vessel, to the Indian Coast Guard on 25 August 2026, built with more than 65 per cent indigenous content.
ICGS Ajit is 51.43 metres long and 8 metres wide, displaces 330 tonnes at a draught of 2.5 metres, exceeds 27 knots and has an endurance of 1,500 nautical miles, with a crew of 6 officers and 35 sailors.
The vessel is powered by twin marine diesel engines driving controllable pitch propellers - described by the shipyard as a first-of-its-kind feature in this class of Fast Patrol Vessels - along with an integrated machinery control system.
Separately, the Indian Navy announced it will commission Nipun, the second Nistar-class Diving Support Vessel, on 31 August 2026 at Naval Dockyard, Mumbai. Indigenously designed and built by Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Visakhapatnam, it was delivered to the Navy on 30 July 2026.
Nipun is a purpose-built platform for deep-sea diving and underwater intervention, with specialised diving, station-keeping and medical facilities, and will augment the Navy's submarine rescue capability.
| Aspect | ICGS Ajit | Nipun |
|---|---|---|
| Service | Indian Coast Guard | Indian Navy |
| Type | Fast Patrol Vessel | Diving Support Vessel (Nistar-class), second of class |
| Builder | Goa Shipyard Limited, Goa | Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Visakhapatnam |
| Status on 25 August 2026 | Handed over to the Indian Coast Guard | Delivered 30 July 2026; commissioning announced for 31 August 2026 at Naval Dockyard, Mumbai |
| Principal roles | Fisheries protection, EEZ surveillance, coastal patrol, anti-smuggling, anti-piracy, search and rescue | Deep-sea diving and underwater intervention, sustained diver support, submarine rescue support |
| Key technical feature | Controllable pitch propellers on twin marine diesels; integrated machinery control system | Modern diving systems, precise station keeping, platform management and specialised medical facilities |
At depth, a diver's body absorbs inert gas from the breathing mixture in proportion to pressure. Coming up too fast lets that gas form bubbles in the blood - decompression sickness. Saturation diving solves the problem by accepting it: divers are held in a pressurised chamber aboard ship at the pressure of their working depth, transferred down in a sealed diving bell, and decompressed only once, at the end of a mission that may last days or weeks. That is why a diving support vessel is a floating pressurised habitat with hyperbaric medical facilities, not merely a boat with air cylinders on deck. The same logic governs submarine rescue. A Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle is a small submersible that mates with the escape hatch of a disabled submarine and ferries the crew out in batches - but it has very limited endurance and no capacity to cross an ocean on its own. It must be carried to the scene by a mother ship that launches it, recovers it, and then receives the rescued crew into decompression chambers, because a crew trapped in a flooded compartment has itself been breathing pressurised air. India's two DSRVs, inducted in 2018 at Mumbai and in 2019 at Visakhapatnam, are what a vessel of the Nistar class exists to carry and support.
Simple Analogy: A DSRV without a mother ship is like an ambulance with no roads and no hospital - it can reach the patient only if something carries it there, and the patient survives only if a treatment facility is waiting when it returns.
India's maritime law-enforcement and search-and-rescue service, constituted under the Coast Guard Act, 1978 and functioning under the Ministry of Defence. Its charter covers protection of maritime zones including the Exclusive Economic Zone, fisheries protection, anti-smuggling and anti-piracy operations, marine environment protection and search and rescue. Its motto is 'Vayam Rakshamah' - We Protect.
A Defence Public Sector Undertaking under the administrative control of the Ministry of Defence, and one of India's principal builders of patrol vessels in steel and aluminium for the Navy and the Coast Guard. It was founded in 1957 as Estaleiros Navais de Goa by the Portuguese administration to build barges for Goa's mining industry, and was turned to warship construction after Goa's integration with India in 1961.
India's oldest shipyard, founded in 1941 as Scindia Shipyard by the industrialist Walchand Hirachand, nationalised in 1961 and renamed HSL, and transferred from the Ministry of Shipping to the Ministry of Defence in 2010. It designed and built the Nistar-class diving support vessels and has been central to India's submarine rescue capability.
The maritime arm of the Indian Armed Forces, which will commission Nipun on 31 August 2026 at Naval Dockyard, Mumbai. It operates two Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles, inducted at Mumbai in December 2018 and at Visakhapatnam in 2019, covering the western and eastern seaboards respectively.
Give first preference in defence procurement to equipment that is indigenously designed, developed and manufactured, so that India owns the design and can upgrade it without foreign consent.
Key: The highest-priority acquisition category under DAP 2020. It requires a minimum of 50 per cent indigenous content where the design is Indian - raised from 40 per cent under the earlier procedures - and restricts eligibility to Indian entities owning the intellectual property of the main equipment. ICGS Ajit's stated indigenous content of more than 65 per cent sits well above that floor.
Allow outright purchase from a foreign vendor where a capability does not exist domestically, while requiring that follow-on manufacture happen in India.
Key: Introduced in DAP 2020 in place of the older 'Buy and Make' category, with a minimum indigenisation requirement of 50 per cent.
Bar the import of listed items after fixed timelines so they must be sourced from Indian manufacturers, creating assured demand.
Key: The Ministry of Defence has notified successive lists; the sixth covers 405 strategically important items with an estimated business potential of about Rs 3,070 crore, comprising 389 items of Defence Public Sector Undertakings and 16 of the Indian Coast Guard.
India's naval and coast guard construction is spread across both seaboards. On the west coast, Goa Shipyard Limited at Vasco da Gama builds patrol vessels for the Coast Guard and Navy, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders at Mumbai builds destroyers, frigates and submarines, and Naval Dockyard Mumbai is where Nipun will be commissioned. On the east coast, Hindustan Shipyard Limited at Visakhapatnam - the base of the Eastern Naval Command and of one of the two Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicles - builds specialised vessels such as the Nistar class, and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers at Kolkata builds frigates, corvettes and survey vessels. Cochin Shipyard in Kerala built India's first indigenous aircraft carrier. The Coast Guard's operating area extends across India's Exclusive Economic Zone, which reaches 200 nautical miles from the baseline, along a coastline that touches nine states and four union territories.
One of ICGS Ajit's stated roles is EEZ surveillance; under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea a coastal state's EEZ extends up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, within which it holds sovereign rights over living and non-living resources.
The release ties indigenous shipbuilding to India's blue economy ambitions - sustainable use of ocean resources for growth - for which policing of fisheries and offshore assets is a precondition.
Submarine rescue capability is scarce enough that navies possessing it extend assistance to partners, making a diving support vessel an instrument of maritime cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region as well as a national asset.
The Coast Guard's coastal patrolling and anti-smuggling role expanded sharply after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when seaborne infiltration exposed gaps between naval, coast guard and marine police jurisdictions.
GS Paper 3 > Security > Defence Indigenisation; Coastal and Maritime Security
General Awareness > Ships, Shipyards and Defence Organisations
General Awareness > Static GK on Defence PSUs and Acts
Ship commissionings and shipyard pairings appear repeatedly in defence and general-awareness papers; the Coast Guard Act, 1958-style institutional facts are perennial static GK.
A small, high-speed coast guard or naval vessel used for coastal patrol, fisheries protection, interception and search and rescue rather than for fleet combat.
A propeller whose blade angle can be varied while running, allowing thrust to be changed without altering engine speed - improving manoeuvrability and fuel efficiency at varied speeds.
A technique in which divers are held at working pressure in an onboard chamber for the duration of a mission and decompressed only once, permitting long periods of work at depth.
A small submersible that mates with the escape hatch of a disabled submarine to evacuate its crew; it depends on a mother ship for transport, launch, recovery and decompression.
The proportion of a defence platform's value sourced from Indian design, materials, components and labour - the metric on which acquisition categories under DAP 2020 turn.