More than 2,500 drone owners have registered themselves in the last 5 days through the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s (MoCA) online platform, Digital Sky, The Hindu reported. The registrations were made after a public notice was issued by the ministry on January 13 making it mandatory for all drone owners in India to register themselves and their drones, online, by January 31. The drone registration platform has “Happiest Minds”, a private IT company, as its system integrator. Although a MoCA official had told MediaNama that the “data is not in any private hand”, they did not specify if the company will have visibility into the data submitted by drone operators as it implements the platform in phases. India’s first drone census: The recently issued deadline by the government (dated January 13) called for the disclosure of all drones in an attempt to identify civil drones and operators in India. It applies to “ALL unmanned aircraft” [sic] and includes models, prototypes, toys, remote-controlled aircraft, autonomous and remotely piloted aircraft systems. The entire process of registration is to take place through the online portal, Digital Sky which was launched by MOCA in 2018 to facilitate online registration for drone operators.
