What's New

Ministry of Civil Aviation has issued new draft rules for Drones in India. Mention the features of this draft. Also discuss why India needs these new rules.

Introduction:

Indian Government had released a set of rules for unmanned aircrafts in March 2021. Now, these rules are replaced by the Drone rules 2021. The objective of the new rules is to encourage more variety of drones with ensuring safety. The security risks are relatively higher, therefore these new rules are required.

Body:

Need:

• Drone technology will be a key aspect in future
• Reduces human intervention
• Various commercial activities will depend upon drones
• Advanced Security systems will be implemented using drones
• Drones can be used for vigilance

Features:

• Abolishment of several approvals: Such as Import clearance, Authorisation numbers, Conformance certificate
• Cancellation of security clearances
• Development of Digtial sky platform- This platform will act as single window and minimal human interaction with self generation of permissions.
• Total number of norms has been reduced to 6 from 25.
• Interactive zones: Yellow zone reduced to 12 km from 45 km from the airport perimeter. No flight permission required upto 400 feet in green zones and upto 200 feet in the area between 8 and 12 km from the airport perimeter.

Conclusion:

Since we are in a transformational phase, implementing new rules is key for all the above mentioned reasons. Several do’s and don’t’s are to be clearly mentioned so that it will not pose a security threat to the country. Recently there are reports on the misuse of these unmanned aircraft systems such as the Jammu & Kashmir incident where a drone was used to carry explosive into an Indian military airport. Such actiivites should be curbed. Therefore these new laws are very important.