Future-ready regulation is India’s first step towards wide scale drones adoption

 

Continuity of an earlier fiat

In April 2016, the government had put out a circular, which in many ways resembles the new draft policy, but the new one is better and makes way for drones to take flight.

“There might be changes in category and other specifications but (I am) very happy with the new draft. There are no unnecessary complications. Looks like (the policymakers’) heart is in the right place,” said Ankit Mehta, CEO and cofounder of Mumbai drone maker Ideaforge.

The aviation ministry said each drone needs to be registered before they can fly and listed operational procedures that drone owners will have to complete each time a drone takes off. Drones have been categorised in five different categories based on weight – starting at less than 250




A one-time clearance will be required for registering the drone, civil aviation secretary Rajiv Nayan Choubey told FactorDaily at the sidelines of Wednesday’s press conference. “The permissions you need to take while operating it each time will come separately. As far as the operations is concerned – flight plan, filing the clearance of air defence number, and information to local police – every time when the drone goes into the sky, these have to be furnished.”

Even in the case of filling for the flight plan and clearances, the ministry said that doing ot manually on paper will take very long and hence is working on a web-based digital template for the operator to file it on the website or app, without any manual intervention.

The draft regulation has also clearly defined areas which will be categorised as ‘No Drone Zone’, like an area covering five-km radius from Vijay Chowk in New Delhi among others. The area has top government offices and housing, including the Rashtrapati Bhavan. No drone or UAS will be permitted to operate in these marked areas but operators can request for permission to operate in the no drone zones in exceptional cases.





The ministry also said that in future if the drone space gets too crowded, there are also plans to deploy an air traffic control (ATC) for drones which should help ease out drone congestion in the skies.

Industry experts echo the government’s concerns. “There should also be ATC for drones. Earlier, in case of autonomous delivery one couldn’t have gone beyond the line-of-sight. For delivery, you need an autonomous vehicle not a manually operated one,” said Nimish Sharma, Senior Director at logistics company Delhivery. He leads the company’s drone R&D operations.

The regulatory framework covers use, operations, and maintenance of drones but there is a need to ease up norms for manufacturing them, Sharma added. “If you can’t import parts, how will you manufacture drones? The ecosystem will take a while to develop. There are very strict norms from the DIPP on who can manufacture,” he said. DIPP is short for the government’s department of industrial promotion and policy.

The real outcome of the new regulations will be when large scale drone manufacturing takes off in India. That will also open up markets for international companies such as DJI Drones and GoPro to start retailing in India. Their products are largely available in the grey market today with no warranty and often double the price to elsewhere in the world.