India Will Get a New Drone Policy Soon: Civil Aviation Minister

May. 16, 2018

Civil Aviation Minister Jayant Sinha recently revealed that the ministry is in the final stages of developing a new drone policy for the country which is expected to be released quite soon. Last year, the ministry had released draft rules for unmanned aircraft systems, seeking inputs from the public to further customize the policy.

During a session at the Global Exhibition on Services organized by the department of commerce and industry, Sinha was quoted saying:

“We have finalized our work on the drone policy…Some tricky issues need to be resolved from security and global standards point of view. We are not at the end of that consultation process. So our hope is that very shortly we will have a final drone policy coming out.”

The draft rules had classified drone into five categories, with those weighing up to 250 grams described as ‘nano’ drones. Drones between 250 grams and 2kg were labeled as ‘micro’, while drones weighing above 2kg to 25kg were classified as ‘mini’. Any drone between 25kg and 150kg were labeled ‘small’ and drones above the 150kg threshold were described as ‘large’.