Hyderabad: Union Minister for Civil Aviation Jyothiraditya Scindia said Medicine from the Sky would go down in history as a revolutionary initiative. Scindia said Medicine from the Sky project is successfully launched in Vikarabad on Saturday.

India was not just a follower, but a world leader in bringing ground-breaking technological drone innovations to the fore. He, along with Telangana IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao and Education Minister Sabitha Indra Reddy, launched three drones developed by Marut Drones, Sky Air and Tech Eagle Innovations, which successfully carried payloads of vaccines in a controlled environment to a community health centre located 6 km away from the launch site at the Police Parade Grounds.

Scindia in his address on the occasion said that the dream of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become a reality now that the recently introduced drone rules and policy by the Centre were based on trust, self-certification and non intrusive monitoring. As per the new rules, there would still be multiple interventions, but with no human interface, to upload data and get permissions for flight. This opens doors to unleash the great potential of young innovators, he said.

Scindia said that efforts were on to converge with the State governments to prepare an interactive airspace map which would be ready in a month or two with green, yellow and red zones for flying drones. As many as 16 green zones would be exclusively marked for delivering medicines, vaccines, blood units, and even organs to the remotest of areas, he said.

He also said that strict measures were in place to register drones with unique numbers, just like automobiles, and that there would be a thorough screening process in the case of drone importing. He said that in the future, drones could even be used to ferry passengers, just like cabs, and that by 2030, India would be the global hub of drone technology.