India issues drone traffic management policy for UAS

28 Oct 2021 CW Team

The centre has issued a traffic management policy framework for the National Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) or drones. The framework will allow public and private service providers to manage drone traffic in India.

The drone traffic management policy takes account of the scenarios, including flying multiple drones near manned aircraft at lower levels of airspace where drones are allowed to fly.

According to the UAS traffic management policy framework, the evolution of unmanned aircraft, opening new reforms, has increased in India.

The safety of the aircraft in the Indian airspace is required to enable a combination of standards, procedures, technology and real-time data exchange.

According to the policy, the current Air Traffic Management (ATM) has not been designed to handle traffic from unmanned aircraft. Integrating it with Indian airspace through conventional means may require being equipped with bulky and expensive hardware.

The policy defines the architecture and mechanism for UTM airspace, including traffic management in lower airspaces up to 1,000 feet above ground level.

As per the policy, the UTS system will achieve the targets of stakeholders to seamlessly communicate with each other, assisting each other and providing situational awareness of low-level airspace to the stakeholders.

The Director of the Drone Federation of India, Smit Shah, said that the drone policy would allow third-party services to deploy automatic, algorithm-driven software for managing drone traffic in India.

The goal is to conduct an outcome-based, time-bound UTM as the key policy framework that would allow the country to engage in Public-private partnership (PPP) for developing safety and separation standards for drones to allow drone operations in the country.

Image Source

Also read: Government to purchase 200 drones to speed up land mapping process

Infrastructure Transport

12 Mar 2026

Kavach 4.0 Commissioned on Delhi–Mumbai and Delhi–Howrah

"Kavach version four has been commissioned on 1,452 route km, covering the high density Delhi–Mumbai and Delhi–Howrah corridors. The rollout included laying 8,570 km of optical fibre, installation of 1,100 telecom towers, deployment of trackside equipment over 6,776 RKm and establishment of 767 station data centres. Trackside implementation has been taken up on 24,427 RKm covering Golden Quadrilateral, Golden Diagonal and High Density Network sections. The programme aims to strengthen signalling and train protection on key routes.Kavach is an indigenously developed automatic train protecti..

Railways Advance Kalyan–Murbad Line And Mumbai Capacity Expansion

"Indian Railways is advancing multiple rail infrastructure projects in Maharashtra, including the sanctioned Kalyan–Murbad new line and sizable investments under the Mumbai Urban Transport Project and the Mumbai–Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project. The Kalyan–Murbad 28 km new line has been sanctioned at Rs 8.36 billion (bn) on a 50:50 cost-sharing basis with the Government of Maharashtra and has been declared a Special Railway Project for land acquisition; proposals covering 214 hectares are at various stages of acquisition. Budgetary outlay for projects falling fully or partly in Maharash..

Parliamentary Panel Flags Funding Gaps in Heavy Industries

"The Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry (Rajya Sabha) presented its 332nd report on the Demands for Grants 2026-27 of the Ministry of Heavy Industries (MHI). Figures converted from crore and lakh are expressed in million (mn). The Budget Estimates 2026-27 for the Ministry stand at Rs 79,399 mn against a projected requirement of Rs 94,843.2 mn, a shortfall of about 16 per cent, with revenue at Rs 79,370.8 mn and capital compressed to Rs 28.2 mn from Rs 5,020 mn.The committee flagged recurring BE-to-RE compression and declining revised estimate utilisation, and calle..