Civil aviation, home ministries working to formulate guidelines for secure drone ops: Naidu

New Delhi: The civil aviation and home ministries are working to formulate guidelines for secure operations as well as optimum utilisation of drones, Union minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Wednesday.

The minister was responding to a query on whether the government is looking at any particular plan to deal with rogue drones in the context of the recent incident in Manipur.

In the ethnic violence in Manipur, recently, militants deployed drones to launch bomb attacks.

“For drones, there is a security angle also. We are sitting with the Ministry of Home Affairs trying to formulate some guidelines and if necessary, an Act also around it,” Naidu said and added that the guidelines are aimed at ensuring secured operations and optimum utilisation of drones.

He said that inter-ministerial consultations are being done in this regard.

The government has been taking various measures to promote increased use of drones in various sectors.

“Prime Minister has been a huge promoter of usage of drones for different activities especially agriculture… when we create guidelines, it has to promote utilisation of drones and also address the security part. It is going to be an inter-ministerial effort… we are in the process of doing the consultations,” Naidu said on the sidelines of a conference in the national capital.