India‘s agriculture ministry is looking to drone technology to fight against locust swarms that have infested the states of Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh. India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation has given the go-ahead for the drones to be used in the fight.
Drone test flights beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) have been taking place in the US for some time. Now India is about to join with its own BVLOS drone test flights in near the future. This means that India will be getting long-range drone flights to deliver goods and possibly emergency supplies to hard to reach communities.
Mukesh Yadav, an urban planner and a member of the practice team at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and who works in the fields of urban planning, governance and policy advisory using remote sensing and GIS as a tool, writes about India’s new drone policy and why it is shortsighted.
Like elsewhere in the world, India’s drone market is expected to grow strongly in the coming years. A report from the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Ernst & Young (EY) noted that Indian UAS market will touch $885.7 million by 2021.
On Wednesday a Chinese tourist took a drone into a secure area at the Taj Mahal in India. He was stopped by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel manning the internal security of heritage monument before he had a chance to fly it. The 26-year-old Gui Guanxiong from Beijing pleaded innocence. he said he was not aware of any restrictions on flying drones near the Taj Mahal.
In just four months a new drone policy in India passed by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will go into effect. Currently, permission is required to operate an unmanned aircraft in India and punishments including jail time are given out to those who fly without consent. As of December 1st, 2018, India’s drone laws will resemble those that pilots must follow in the United States. Here is everything you need to know about what flying a drone in India will be like once these policies go into effect.
The Pakistani army claims to have shot down a spy drone from India. The unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down in the village of Chirikot in the Kashmir region along the contested border, also known as the ‘Line of Control’. The Pakistani army has retrieved the wreckage. India has not yet issued an official statement.
China accuses India of invading Chinese airspace with a drone days before the Chinese minister Wang Yi is supposed to visit New Delhi. India’s Ministry of Defense said on Thursday that it had lost control over the drone and that Indian border security personnel alerted their Chinese counterparts immediately.
