NEW DELHI: India and the Czech Republic have agreed to expand their defence industrial collaboration, the defence ministry said on Tuesday, following bilateral talks between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Karel Havlíček, the Czech Republic's First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade.
In its statement, the ministry said the two leaders reviewed "the entire spectrum" of defence industrial cooperation at the meeting in New Delhi. Both sides welcomed the ongoing collaboration and the establishment of various joint ventures, and agreed to further expand cooperation, including through the India-Czech Joint Defence Committee (JDC), to promote the government's 'Make in India' and 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' initiatives in defence manufacturing.
The two leaders also discussed current peace and security issues and acknowledged the need for greater cooperation to maintain regional stability, the statement said. They reiterated that the partnership rests on historical and cultural ties and shared values of mutual trust and respect.
Havlíček is on a four-day visit to India and is meeting officials from various ministries as well as trade and business representatives. He is scheduled to visit industrial units in Bengaluru and Mumbai.
The fresh bilateral comes a year after the JDC met in Prague in October 2025, with the Indian side led by Director General (Acquisition) A Anbarasu. Talks then focused on joint production, R&D, technology sharing and capacity-building. It was the first JDC meeting since February 2020.
Industry-level ties have also picked up. In August, Vijayan Trishul Defence Solutions (VTDS), which holds a Home Ministry licence to manufacture small arms and ammunition, signed a technology partnership with DEUS Automation, a sister company of the Czech STV Group, under which the Czech firm will supply technology to produce small-calibre ammunition in India.
Czech officials have pitched their industry's familiarity with Soviet-origin weaponry, which both countries have operated, as a basis for cooperation, at a time when India is diversifying its sources of defence equipment to reduce dependence on Russia.
Czech military hardware has a long history in India. The Army's Tatra all-terrain trucks were first contracted from Czechoslovakia in 1986, and BEML went on to assemble and supply about 7,000 of them over the next 26 years, though the arrangement later became the subject of a CBI investigation.
The bilateral push also comes amid closer India-Europe defence ties. In January, India and the EU signed a Security and Defence Partnership on the margins of the India-EU Summit, covering areas such as maritime security, cyber and counter-terrorism, alongside the conclusion of the long-negotiated free trade agreement. In February, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Czech Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Petr Macinka at the Munich Security Conference, where the two discussed economic and defence collaboration.
