Circular No. - 32/2019
F. No. 394/08/2017-Commr (Iny.-Cus.)
Government of India
Ministry of Finance
Department of Revenue
Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs
(Investigation — Customs)
REKKKEK
New Delhi, dated: 20/09/2019
To,
All Principal Chief Commissioners/ Chief Commissioners of Customs/ Customs
(Preventive)/ Customs & CGST,
The Principal Commissioner, Directorate of Logistics,
The Directors General, DRI/ DGGI,
Webmaster, CBIC.
Madam/ Sir,
Subject: Disposal of Unmanned Aircraft System(UAS)/Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle (UAVs)/remotely piloted Aircrafts (RPAS)/Drones-reg.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)/ Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS)/ Remotely
Piloted Aircrafts (RPAS)/ Drones, (herein-after referred to as ‘Drones’) of various
frequencies brought by the passengers at different Airports or imported at various ports,
FPOs, etc., in contravention of the statutory requirements, have been absolutely confiscated
as per legal process. Accordingly, the Customs field formations have sought the Board’s
guidelines for the disposal of such confiscated Drones.
2 The matter of disposal of the confiscated Drones has been examined in consultation
with the regulatory agencies such as the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the
Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) Wing of the Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). During such consultation,
the following points emanated, namely-
(i) DGCA’s Drone guidelines on ‘Requirements for Operation of Civil Remotely Piloted
Aircraft System (RPAS)’, which are available at http://dgca.nic.in/cars/D3X-XI.pdf
prescribe the regulatory requirements, restrictions and procedure relating to licensing
and operation of Drones.
(ii) | The Drones owned/ operated by National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO),
Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and Central Intelligence Agencies are exempted
from obtaining UIN.
(iii) | The Drones are required to get Equipment Type Approval (ETA) from WPC Wing.
There is no exemption to any agency/organisation in this regard.
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Circular No. - 32/2019
The MHA has categorically directed that the Drones should not be auctioned/ sold as
such or even in dismantled condition in the open market; and that due to security
reasons, these should be handed-over to the Defence/ Security Forces only.
On its part, the Integrated Financial Unit (IFU) of the Ministry of Finance has
concurred with the proposal for transfer of such Drones to the eligible agencies within the
Government free-of-charge on gratis basis.
4. In the circumstance, the following guidelines are prescribed for disposal of
confiscated Drones which are ‘ripe for disposal’:
a)
b)
d)
All the formations shall prepare an inventory of Drones, available as-on-date,
according to their type, make, model, etc. The drones will be classified in accordance
with the DGCA guidelines. Para 3.1 of these guidelines provides the categorization of
the Drones, as follows:
“3.1 Civil RPA is categorized in accordance with Maximum All-Up-Weight
(including payload) as indicated below:
(i) Nano: Less than or equal to 250 grams.
(ii) Micro: Greater than 250 grams and less than or equal to 2 kg.
(iii) Small: Greater than 2 kg and less than or equal to 25 kg.
(iv) | Medium: Greater than 25 kg and less than or equal to 150 kg.
(v) Large: Greater than 150 kg.”’;
All the Drones of all the categories shall be transferred to the warehouses of the
following Customs formations, namely, Chennai (Airport), Delhi (IGIA), Kolkata
(Airport) and Mumbai (Airport), which shall be the focal Commissionerates for
stocking, segregation, joint inspection by all agencies and distribution. For this
purpose, all the Customs Zones have been mapped to these focal Commissionerates as
indicated at Annexure-A.
The Customs formations shall transfer the stock of Drones only after they are ‘ripe for
disposal’. Adequate precaution shall be taken, so that no pilferage/ loss takes place
during such transfer. The Superintendent in-charge of Warehouse shall prepare the list
of Drones and get the approval of the Principal Commissioner/ Commissioner
concerned before such transfer. The list of Drones shall contain category, type, make,
quantity and any other information which may be available on the package; due
acknowledgement of receipt of the Drones at the destination Focal Customs
Commissionerates should be given and a corresponding receipt entry shall be made in
the Warehouse/ Disposal Register. The Pro-forma for maintaining a record of the
transfer and acknowledgement are given at Annexure-B. Copies shall be kept by the
Warehouse/ Disposal Sections of the transferring Customs Zones and the Focal
Customs Commissionerates.
At the Focal Customs Commissionerates, the general principle of identification,
segregation and distribution of the stock of the seized/ confiscated Drones shall be as
follows:
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(i)
(ii)
(iii)
For
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
Circular No. - 32/2019
In regard to the stock of the Drones that is presently available, the following
action will be taken:
a) The requirements of DRI and Customs field formations shall be met first from
the available stock of Drones. For this purpose, any Customs field formation
requiring the Drones for their operational purpose, shall make a request to the
DGRI, which shall make a recommendation for approval to the Board. After
such approval, the DRI may include the requirement of the field formation(s)
to its own requirement for determining their total requirement; and convey the
same to all the Focal Customs Commissionerates.
b) The Focal Customs Commissionerates shall intimate DRI and the concerned
Customs field formation about the availability/ receipt of the Drones, and the
DRI/ Customs field formation will then identify and take possession of the
Drones as per their requirement.
c) The remaining stock of Drones will be distributed equally between the MoD &
the MHA (and their constituent organizations/ agencies) after a joint
inspection that will be conducted by the nodal officers of the MoD and the
MHA (or their authorised representatives).
As regard the future stock of the Drones that are received by the Focal Customs
Commissionerates from time to time, the requirements of DRI and Customs
field formations shall be met first. Thereafter, the MoD & the MHA (and their
constituent organizations/ agencies) shall be invited for a joint inspection to be
conducted by the nodal officers of the MoD and the MHA (or their
representatives) bi-annually in the second/ third week of January and July. In
case either Ministry does not turn up for such joint inspection or forgoes its
quota, the same would be made available to the other.
In the event, the DRI (or Customs field formation) does not require any Drones,
the same shall be intimated by the DRI to the Focal Customs Commissionerate;
and the available stock will then be distributed equally between the MoD & the
MHA (and their constituent organizations/ agencies). In case either Ministry
forgoes its quota, the same would be made available to the other.
the joint inspection and segregation of the Drones by different agencies:
The Additional/ Joint Commissioner of Customs in-charge of ‘Warehouse and
Disposal’ of the Focal Commissionerate, shall be the contact point for
coordination with the DRI, the MoD and the MHA:
The Additional Director/ Joint Director (Policy), DRI-Headquarters or the
Additional/ Joint Director of the Zonal Unit, as nominated by DG (DR), shall
be the nodal officer for the DRI; and
The Nodal officers of the MoD and the MHA are given in Annexure-C.
The MoD and the MHA will communicate the change of the Nodal Officers (or their
authorized representatives) as-and-when such change happens, to the Commissioner
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Circular No. - 32/2019
(Investigation — Customs) at mgt.valavan@nic.in, CBIC. The Nodal officers shall,
preferably, be at the level of Director/ Deputy Secretary.
g) The Additional/ Joint Commissioner of Customs in-charge of Warehouse and
Disposal of the Focal Customs Commissionerate will intimate the date and time of
inspection of drones well in advance to the agencies concerned, and such date shall be
mutually convenient for all the agencies;
h) The transfer of the Drones, within the CBIC as well as to the MoD and the MHA, is
subject to the following conditions:
(i) _ The Drones shall be supplied on gratis basis (free-of-cost), on ‘as-is where-is’
condition;
(ii) It will be the responsibility of the recipient to comply with all the regulatory
requirements as mentioned at Para 2 above and the DGCA conditions/
restrictions regarding possession and utilization of the Drones. The recipient
shall produce all the necessary documents to this effect to the Additional/ Joint
Commissioner of Customs concerned at the Focal Customs Commissionerate at
the time of taking over of the Drones;
(iii) No Drone would be resold after the end of their life or when they become
obsolete or irreparable. Such Drones shall be destroyed by all the recipient;
(iv) Proper acknowledgement shall be obtained and kept by the respective Focal
Customs Commissionerate upon transfer of Drones to the recipients mentioned
above. Such acknowledgment shall contain the details of the Drones, including
their category, type, make, quantity and any other information which may be
available on the package. A pro-forma, in this regard is given at Annexure — D.
(v) Upon transfer of the Drones, a suitable entry, to this effect, shall be made in the
Warehouse/ Disposal Register at the Focal Customs Commissionerate.
5. The Principal Chief Commissioners/ Chief Commissioners/ Principal Directors
General/ Directors General are, hereby, directed to circulate these guidelines to all the
formations under their charge.
6. Difficulties, if any, in implementation of these guidelines may be brought to the
notice of the Board.
2 This issues with the approval of the Competent Authority.
Yours sincerely,
a
(a! aon ‘
x
(Ranjana Chaudhary)
Asst. Commissioner (Inv. — Cus)
CBIC, New Delhi
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Circular No. - 32/2019
Annexure - A
[to Board’ Circular No.-32/2019 vide F. No. 394/08/2017-Commr (Inv.-Cus)]
Mapping of Customs Zones to the Focal Customs Commissionerates for transfer of
confiscated Drones
S. | Customs / CGST Zone Focal Customs Commissionerates
1. | Chennai, Tiruchirappalli
(P), Thiruvananthapuram
(Kochi), Bengaluru,
Visakhapatnam,
Hyderabad
Chennai (Airport)
2. | Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar,
Guwahati, Patna (P)
Kolkata (Airport)
3. | Mumbai-I, Mumbai-II,
Mumbai-IIl, Pune,
Ahmedabad, Nagpur
Mumbai (Airport)
4. | Delhi, Delhi (P), Bhopal
Delhi (IGIA)
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Circular No. - 32/2019
Annexure - B
[Circular No.- 32/2019 vide F. No. 394/08/2017-Commr (Inv.-Cus)]
Document for Transit Acknowledgment for Confiscated Drones
S. No. Category Make/Type Any other Quantity (in
Relevant number)
Information
Available on the
Package
qd) (2) @) (4) (5)
Signature:
Date:
Name:
Designation: Superintendent of Customs,
Disposal/Warehouse Section,
eecsecvesed Commissionerate
Acknowledgement
Received total.......... Drones, as listed above, after checking and tallying with the entries
mentioned in the above table.
Signature:
Date:
Name:
Designation: Superintendent of Customs,
Disposal/Warehouse Section,
meee Commissionerate
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Annexure - C
Circular No. - 32/2019
e [Circular No.- 32/2019 vide F. No. 394/08/2017-Commr (Inv.-Cus)]
List of Nodal Officers
S. | Organization Nodal Officer Contact No./Mobile No.
No
1. | SPG Sh. Sunil Kumar, SSO/Tech | 011-23015964/ 9968534765
2. | CRPP Sh. Vaibhav Kumar 9899359226
Srivastava, Assistant
Commandant
3. |NSG Major Surender Singh 9001733778/ 7976966601
AC-II Thorat BM 9340730105
4. | NTRO Maj DS Sidhu (Retd), Senior | 8019500111
Aviator
5, | CISE Sh. Shrikant Kishore, DIG 011-25673068/011-49654286
6. | BSF Sh. D.S. Bisht, Commandant | 9856182908
(Ops)
DC (Mod), Prov Dte, BSF
DC (R&D), Comn & IT Dte,
FHQ. BSF
7. >) TEBP Sh. R.P.S. Raghuvanshi, 011-24360486
Commandant (Nodal
Officer)
Sh. Hem Chandra Kapil, Dy. | 9410738312
Commandant
Nikhil Yadav, Sub-Inspector | 8882298991
8. DGI, GS Branch Col Prashant Pande, YSM 011-23018398
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Circular No. - 32/2019
Annexure - D
[Circular No.- 32/2019 vide F. No. 394/08/2017-Commr (Inv.-Cus)]
Transfer of Confiscated Drones to Recipient
S. No. Category Make/Type Any other Quantity (in
Relevant number)
Information
Available on the
Package
dd) (2) 3) (4) (5)
Acknowledgement
Handed over and received stock of drones after checking and tallying with the entries
mentioned in the above Table.
Officer Handing over Officer Receiving
Signature: Signature:
Date: Date:
Name: Name:
Designation: Additional/Joint Commissioner Designation: (Not below the rank of
of Customs, Disposal/Warehouse Section, Director/Deputy Secretary)
cies Commissionerate Agency:
Ministry:
ee 2 oe 2 2 ae eo ok ok oko ok
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