Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will carry out the DPSU annual performance review for 16 Defence Public Sector Undertakings in New Delhi on September 1, with the government pressing for new indigenous technologies and higher exports.

The event was confirmed in a release from the Press Information Bureau issued on Monday afternoon. It is an annual exercise held under the Department of Defence Production to take stock of state owned defence manufacturers spanning shipbuilding, aircraft, missile systems and specialty metals.

Seven DPSU chiefs to hand over dividend cheques

At the September 1 event, the Chairmen and Managing Directors of seven DPSUs, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), BEML and MIDHANI, will present dividend cheques for the government's equity shares to the Defence Minister for the financial year 2025-26.

The seven span shipbuilding, aerospace, electronics, missile systems and specialty metallurgy between them.

Four books timed to the DPSU annual performance review

Rajnath Singh will also release four books at the event. One, titled 'Aatmanirbhar DPSU, A journey of DPSUs towards Self-Reliance', charts the sector's move toward domestic manufacturing.

A second, DISHA, is pitched as a student initiative for hands on awareness of defence technologies and modern manufacturing processes. The remaining two, a Modernisation roadmap of HAL and an Indigenisation Roadmap of HAL, are specific to the aerospace major alone.

What the numbers behind the review look like

The Ministry of Defence has already flagged the scale of what will be reviewed. DPSU turnover for 2025-26 stood at Rs 1.29 lakh crore, up 15.4 percent on the previous financial year. Cumulative Profit After Tax across the DPSUs came to Rs 23,136 crore, a rise of 15.6 percent. Exports climbed 151.2 percent over the previous financial year, the sharpest of the three figures cited.

Those numbers sit at the centre of the review, and they form the backdrop against which the Defence Minister is expected to press the DPSUs further on indigenous technology development and export growth.

Part of a wider DPSU expansion push

The review lands weeks after Rajnath Singh performed the Bhumi Pujan for a Rs 3,500 crore expansion of GRSE and Yantra India Limited facilities in Kolkata and Ishapore, one of several recent moves to build out DPSU manufacturing capacity.

It also follows a stretch in which HAL has placed fresh orders on fellow DPSU Bharat Dynamics Limited for Helina launchers and countermeasure dispensing system components, the kind of inter DPSU procurement that feeds into the turnover figures now under review. The export growth cited for this DPSU annual performance review also builds on numbers Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cited in recent months, when he pointed to India's defence production and export gains as part of the government's wider Aatmanirbhar Bharat push.

DPSUs under the Department of Defence Production

India currently has 16 Defence Public Sector Undertakings functioning under the Ministry of Defence, ranging from long established majors like HAL and BEL to newer entities carved out of the former Ordnance Factory Board.

The seven DPSUs presenting dividend cheques on September 1 are among the larger, more established names in that group. HAL and MDL carry the biggest order books of the seven, tied respectively to the armed forces' aircraft and shipbuilding programmes, and their turnover weighs heavily in the totals the Defence Minister will review that day.