The Department of Space recently released a draft Spacecom
Policy 2020, along with the draft Norms, Guidelines and Procedures
for the implementation of the Spacecom Policy, also known as
'Spacecom NGP' 2020. This blogpost highlights our comments
to these draft policy documents, highlighting some unaddressed
areas. We have submitted these comments to the Department of
Space.
Introduction:
India had released its first Satcom Policy in 1997.1 However, since the 1997 policy was a
high level document which did not provide as many details, a set of
'norms, procedures and guidelines' was notified in 2000 to
bolster the 1997 Policy.2 However,
both the 1997 Policy and the 2000 guidelines have not been amended
even once, even though India's space activities have grown
exponentially over the past 20 years. These outdated policies,
along with the absence of a separate law for the space sector, have
resulted in an uncertain regulatory framework. A step in this
direction was
