Hours after launching the New Drone Policy 2021, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday said the operation of air taxis will be possible under the new rules.
“Air taxis are being researched and invented globally and many startups are coming up,” the minister said during a press conference.
Jyotiraditya Scindia also said that Defence Ministry, Home Ministry and BCAS (Bureau of Civil Aviation Security) have been working together so that “counter rogue drone technology” can be developed and adopted quickly.
“That time is not far when taxis, like the ones of Uber etc that you see on roads, you will see in the air under the drone policy. I believe this is very much possible,” he added.
Issuing a statement, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said it has eased the rules regarding drone operations in the country by reducing the number of forms that need to be filled to operate them from 25 to 5 and decreasing the types of fees charged from the operator from 72 to 4. In March 2021, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) had published the UAS Rules, 2021.
“They were perceived by academia, Startups, end-users and other stakeholders as being restrictive in nature as they involved considerable paperwork, required permissions for every drone flight and very few ‘free to fly’ green zones were available,” MoCA said in a statement.
The MoCA said based on the feedback, the Centre has decided to repeal the UAS Rules, 2021 and replace the same with the liberalised Drone Rules, 2021.
The ‘Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ (UAS), commonly known as drones, offer tremendous benefits to almost all sectors of the economy like agriculture, mining, infrastructure, surveillance, emergency response, transportation, geo-spatial mapping, defence, and law enforcement.
Information Source: India.com and economic times.
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