Pariksha SaathiINS Mangrol, Third Mahe-Class Anti-Submarine Shallow Water Craft, Joins the Navy
The Indian Navy commissioned INS Mangrol (pennant number P82) at the Naval Dockyard, Mumbai, on 12 October 2026. It is the third vessel of the Mahe class of Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) and was designed and built in India by Cochin Shipyard Limited, Kochi, with more than 80% indigenous content. Vice Admiral Sanjay Vatsayan, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command, presided over the ceremony. The ship is built for work close to the coast: hunting submarines, keeping watch under water, carrying out low-intensity maritime operations and handling mine-warfare-related tasks, using its sonar, sensors and weapons to detect and track underwater threats in littoral waters. Three diesel engines driving waterjet units give it the agility needed in shallow and confined seas. The name comes from Mangrol, a fishing harbour town in Junagadh district of Gujarat, and it also revives an earlier minesweeper, INS Mangrol (M85), which served the Navy until April 2004.
Drafted with AI assistance from the official PIB release linked above and checked against it by a second AI pass. Not line-edited by a human.
Learning context
INS Mangrol is the third of eight Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) that Cochin Shipyard is building for the Navy under a contract signed in April 2019, worth about ₹6,311 crore, following a Defence Acquisition Council approval in December 2013; the class replaces the Abhay-class corvettes commissioned in 1989-91. Its namesake class lead ship, Mahe, is a former French enclave and one of the four non-contiguous districts of the Union Territory of Puducherry, surrounded by Kerala’s Kannur and Kozhikode districts.
Reference: Know India portal (Government of India) — Puducherry
Check yourself: is Mahe, the town, part of Kerala state?
No — though it is geographically surrounded by Kerala’s Kannur and Kozhikode districts, Mahe is administratively one of the four districts of the Union Territory of Puducherry, a former French colony.
Revision task: note INS Mangrol’s specific induction details from this release and compare them with the lead ship INS Mahe’s commissioning (November 2025) from the standing facts above.
Test yourself
INS Mangrol, commissioned on 12 October 2026, is the third vessel of which class of Indian Navy ships?
Show the answer
Answer: Mahe class
INS Mangrol (P82) is the third Mahe-class Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft, built by Cochin Shipyard Limited with over 80% indigenous content, for hunting submarines near the coast and for mine-warfare-related tasks.
Read the daily collection → · Editorial standards & corrections