Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said the government is working on putting in place certain regulations in operating UAVs.
To check use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by rogue elements to carry out terror attacks, the government is mulling to put in place a system to detect and defeat such threats and regulate low flying objects.
Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said there was a need for regulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to prevent its misuse, particularly in populated areas and sensitive locations like airports.
"We need to go into regulations. We need to have a system to detect and destruct rouge aircraft... We have to ensure that UAVs are not hijacked by rouge elements and misused," he said addressing a seminar on 'India's Internal Security and UAVs'.
The Home Secretary said the process of detection and destruction of UAVs is an evolving process and experts are still working on it.
"That is an evolving technology. People are still getting into it, how to do what to do, how to destroy them. It is difficult for UAVs as it has very little footprints. If it is detected in populated areas or in an airport or in a runway, we don't know what would be the impact of its destruction. We really don't aware what would be the consequences," he said.
Mr Mehrishi said putting in place certain regulations in operating UAVs have two aspects, preventive and enabling, and the government was working on both.
The Home Secretary said the government was also exploring the option of using UAVs for works like surveillance in large establishments such as refineries, secure oil pipelines from being broken or stolen, crime detection etc.
Mr Mehrishi, however, said infiltration from across the Indo-Pak border has come down to almost negligible level even though there were areas that need to be secured through technology and increasing capacity, including by using UAVs.
"One important aspect for us is to reduce boots on the ground. We are also using technology intensively so that we ensure security and less personnel on the ground," he said.
Addressing the seminar, Air Marshal VR Chaudhary strongly pitched for bringing UAVs and all low flying objects under the ambit of some rules and regulations as they were "security threat".
He referred to three incidents where UAVs posed possible security threats -- detection of an UAV at Delhi's IGI Airport on October 27, an UAV entering White House in Washington in January this year and landing of an UAV at a hall where German Chancellor Angela Merkel was speaking.