On 25th August 2021, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, India published Drones Rules 2021, a set of new drone regulations to liberalize the R&D, manufacturing and operation of drones in the civil airspace. The new rules will free up years of pent-up demand and supply for the use of drones in India and is a significant step towards the government’s ambition to make India the drone hub of the world by 2030.
Drones first came in the eyes of India’s regulators in 2014 when a restaurant in Mumbai performed a publicity stunt of delivered a pizza by drone to a high-rise apartment. Alarmed at the security concerns posed by this new technology, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) swiftly imposed a blanket ban on the non-government use of drones in October 2014.
It took the next 4 years for drone technology and its benefits to be understood well-enough for the DGCA to permit their use under the first drone regulations introduced in August 2018. These regulations introduced several concepts – a Digital Sky portal with green/yellow/red zones for drone flights, a No Permission No Takeoff (NPNT) framework which would prevent a drone from taking off if it did not have the requisite digital permission, and a remote pilot license for operating drones. These regulations were devised largely keeping in mind security concerns about unauthorized use of drones. While some of the concepts introduced by the regulations were innovative, their on-ground implementation lagged and they were not able to solve the issues that they intended to solve. The regulations did little to stop the unauthorized use of drones but instead made operations difficult for people who wanted to use drones legally.
In March 2021, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) introduced the UAS Rules 2021 which built upon the original regulations and introduced more permissions and authorizations in the process of R&D and manufacturing of drones. These rules were largely considered impractical and untenable and prompted a lot of concerns from the industry. After listening to industry feedback, the MoCA went back to the drawing board and drafted the Drone Rules 2021 which were published in August 2021.
The Drones Rule 2021 are based on a premise of trust, self-certification, and non-intrusive monitoring. The onus of compliance is shifted from the drone manufacturer to the drone operator. The three key tenants to have compliant drone operations under the new rules are:
The number of permissions and authorizations for activities have been reduced from 25 under previous regulations to just 5.
Under the new drone rules,
The rules will significantly amplify business activities in this sector and industries as diverse as agriculture, oil & gas, construction, power & utilities, retail, healthcare will start experimentation and adoption of drone-based solutions to transform their operations.
Under the new drone rules, India will likely become a multi-billion dollar market for commercial drone operations in the next five years, and the sector will create new and unique employment opportunities for drone pilots, engineers and technical professionals.
While the new drone rules have, the government is working on several additional policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to make drone operations safer, secure and scalable. These include the Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) policy and SOPs on remote pilot training and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights. As technology matures and new markets open up, the regulations will have to be agile in responding to ensure that the full potential of this emerging technology of strategic importance is realized.
