DGCA announces India’s drone policy. We decode it for you.

India’s Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has released the long awaited drone policy for their operation by Civilians and Indian companies. We have received a lot of questions from our customers regarding continued operation of their Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)/drones now that the policy is officially announced.

One important thing to note is that the regulations discussed in this article are applicable for all consumer drones, including toys and prototypes, and also to all drones used by Homeland Security and Civil industries. These regulations do not apply to the Ministry of Defence, and therefore all drones for defence and military purposes fall outside their purview. The drone policy can simply be distilled by one very simple specification – the weight of the Drone being flown. Based on the weight of the Drone you own, the flying permissions you need to procure will be different.

Before we dive deeper into the weight categories, let’s talk about common permission for all civil drones in India.

The manufacturer or importer of a drone needs to make sure that the product’s communication frequency (which is usually the same frequency used by a home’s WiFi) has received a clearance to operate from the Department of Telecom’s (DoT’s) Wireless Planning Commission (WPC), referred to as an Equipment Type Approval (ETA). While you as an operator do not have to approach the WPC to get a clearance, the manufacturer of your drone has to. If your drone does not have an ETA, send in a request to the manufacturer of your drone, as this is going to stop any legal flying you are going to do, regardless of which category your drone falls under.

There are four major licenses that you would need to acquire in order to operate drones in India:

• UIN (Unique Identification Number)
• UAOP (Unmanned Aircraft Operating Permit)
• OAN (Ownership Acknowledgment Number)
• DAN (Drone Identification Number)

We’ll discuss these one by one, and in the order that they were enacted by the DGCA. For the categorization, the DGCA breaks down the different categories based on their total weight (including cameras and all sensors) as follows: 

• Nano – weighing less than or equal to 250 grams
• Micro – weighing greater than 250 grams, but less than or equal to 2 Kilograms
• Small – weighing greater than 2 Kilograms, but less than or equal to 25 Kilograms
• Medium – weighing greater than 25 Kilograms, but less than or equal to 150 Kilograms
• Large – weighing greater than 150 Kilograms

If your drone is in the Nano category, you can fly unrestricted below 15 meters. This category is exempt from procuring both a Unique Identification Number (similar to a license plate on a car) and an Unmanned Aircraft Operating Permit (similar to a driver’s license).