He offered 300 acres of land at Orvakallu in Kurnool district — which is close to Amaravati, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai — to the Civil Aviation Ministry for setting up a drone certification centre.
Published Oct 22, 2024 | 4:59 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 22, 2024 | 4:59 PM
Chandrababu Naidu inaugurating Amaravati Drone Summit 2024. File photo
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday, 22 October, predicted that drone technology would prove to be the game-changer in the days to come.
The chief minister, who spoke more like a technocrat than a politician after inaugurating Amaravati Drone Summit 2024 at CK Convention Hall in Mangalagiri near Vijayawada, underscored the sectors in which drones are going to play a major part.
The chief minister told the drone manufacturers who attended the summit that he was their best ambassador for their products if they were cost-effective.
“I will be the best ambassador for you. No one could be better than me. Send all the use cases of drones to me and let us work out the cost-effectiveness,”
He offered 300 acres of land at Orvakallu in Kurnool district — which is close to Amaravati, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai — to the Civil Aviation Ministry for setting up a drone certification centre.
Naidu gave one practical use case of the drone which the Andhra Pradesh government had experimented with successfully.
“When Vijayawada was rocked by heavy floods, we used drones to reach food to the victims whom even the disaster relief teams could not reach. We have supplied food to 1.5 lakh people using drones,” the chief minister said.
As drone use cases fall into several buckets of commercial use, Naidu wanted the manufacturers to keep in mind the cost-effectiveness, saying, “For the time being, there is nothing that drones cannot do.”
“We can use drones to map the areas where garbage has piled up for the sanitation staff to clear them, for effective and invisible policing, in agriculture opera rations, in ensuring uninterrupted power supply and even in reaching medical services to the needy at their homes,” the chief minister said.
Naidu asked the drone manufacturers to use Andhra Pradesh as a testing ground for “use cases” and “proofs of concept” and asked them to give the use cases for testing them.
At the drone summit, Andhra Pradesh signed an agreement with the Quality Council of India to certify drone startups in the state.
Tracing the history of how technology had entered India and Andhra Pradesh, Naidu recalled how he doggedly pursued the technology companies in the 1990s to invest in the state.
He said when he became the chief minister for the first time in 1995, he persuaded US companies and managed to land Microsoft in Hyderabad after constructing HITEC city.
Naidu recalled giving a call in the past that one IT professional should come from each house.
“Today I am giving a call that one entrepreneur should come from each family. The days of doing job work for IT companies are a passe. Now you should be able to come up with products. Instead of looking for jobs, young professionals should think of providing jobs by starting their own companies. In the modern world, anyone could start a company sitting anywhere in the world and provide service,” the chief minister said.
Those who took part in the Drone Summit included Union Civil Aviation Minister K Ramamohan Naidu, Andhra Pradesh Infrastructure Corporation Secretary S Suresh Kumar, Chief Secretary Neerabh Kumar Prasad, Civil Aviation Secretary Vumulunmang Vualnam, and Andhra Pradesh Roads and Buildings Minister BC Janardhan Reddy.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil)
