Use of Advanced Drone Technology (Agriculture Aircraft) in Agriculture Sector

What is the Use of Advanced Drone Technology (Agriculture Aircraft) scheme?

Use of Advanced Drone Technology (Agriculture Aircraft) in Agriculture Sector is a Gujarat state scheme run by the Agriculture, Farmers Welfare and Cooperation Department through the Directorate of Agriculture. The scheme pays farmers a subsidy when they get their standing crop sprayed by an agricultural drone instead of by a knapsack sprayer or a tractor-mounted boom.

According to the scheme description published on the national myScheme portal for Gujarat, drone spraying is being promoted for crop protection chemicals, nano urea, FCO-approved liquid fertilizers and bio-fertilizers. The stated technical case is straightforward: a drone can spray 1 hectare in about 20 minutes using roughly 25 litres of water, delivers around 90% chemical efficiency, and cuts the drift and run-off that a conventional sprayer produces. Conventional spraying of the same hectare needs several hundred litres of water and far more labour hours.

The Gujarat scheme is often referred to locally as the drone sahay yojana on i-Khedut. Whatever it is called, the subsidy applies to the service, not to the machine. The state is not paying farmers to buy drones under this component.

Key features

• Assistance is 90% of the cost or a maximum of Rs 500 per acre per spraying, whichever is less.
• The limit is 5 acres per spraying per account, capping one round at Rs 2,500.
• Spraying is carried out by IFFCO or a subsidiary organisation, a co-operative organisation, a Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) or a Farmer Producer Company (FPC) designated by IFFCO.
• The implementing agency for payment is the Directorate of Agriculture, through the i-Khedut portal.

Who is eligible for the Gujarat drone spraying subsidy?

You can claim the subsidy if:

• You are a land holder, the agricultural land must stand in your name in the revenue record.
• You hold a minimum of 1 acre of agricultural land.
• You have a bank account in your own name, supported by a passbook copy and a cancelled cheque.
• You hold an Aadhaar card as identity proof, linked to a working mobile number for OTP verification.
• You can produce a certified bill for the drone spraying carried out on your field.

You cannot apply, or are not eligible, if:

• You do not hold agricultural land in your own name: landless labourers and informal tenants without a revenue entry are not covered, because the scheme is written around a land holder.
• Your holding is below 1 acre.
• You cannot produce a certified bill for the spraying, since the sanction is calculated on actual expenditure.
• You want the subsidy for buying a drone, that is a different component and is not covered by this Rs 500 per acre assistance.
• Your bank account is in someone else's name, because the payment is a direct transfer to the beneficiary.

A further practical limit applies rather than an exclusion: assistance stops at 5 acres per account per spraying, so a 20-acre farmer receives subsidy on only 5 of those acres in one round.

What documents are required?

How to apply for the drone spraying subsidy on i-Khedut

1. Open the i-Khedut portal at ikhedut.gujarat.gov.in. If you have not used i-Khedut 2.0 before, complete the one-time beneficiary registration (લાભાર્થી નોંધણી) first — the portal sends the verification OTP only to the mobile number linked to your Aadhaar.
2. On the home page, click Schemes, then Agricultural Schemes.
3. Select the drone technology component from the list and click Apply. The application page opens.
4. Click Apply New and fill in your personal details, survey number, area to be sprayed and bank account details, then submit the new application.
5. If you spot a mistake, use the Update Application button to correct the entry before it is locked.
6. Confirm the application. An unconfirmed application is not forwarded for scrutiny, and this is the single most common reason a farmer's claim never reaches the office.
7. Take a printout of the confirmed application and submit it with the supporting documents to the concerned agriculture office within the period the i-Khedut window is open.
8. Track progress in the Applicant Corner at ikhedut.gujarat.gov.in/public/frm_Applicant_Corner.aspx, where you can also upload documents and reprint the form.

How is the money paid and when?

The District Agriculture Officer sanctions the assistance and pays it into the applicant farmer's bank account through ECS, RTGS, NEFT, PFMS or an account-payee cheque. Farmers whose applications are approved for the component are informed by the office. Because the scheme reimburses actual expenditure, the drone spraying is done first and the subsidy follows after the bill is verified. It is not an advance.

When can I apply?

Applications are accepted only while the i-Khedut window for the component is open. The Directorate of Agriculture publishes those dates on the portal, and windows are usually short. A matter of days or a few weeks, not the whole year. There is no published permanent last date for this scheme, so the reliable approach is to check ikhedut.gujarat.gov.in at the start of the season and keep your Aadhaar-linked mobile number active so registration does not hold you up when the window opens.

Why drone spraying applications get rejected

• Application not confirmed on i-Khedut, so it never entered the queue.
• Printout and documents not submitted to the agriculture office during the open window.
• Land record below 1 acre, or the survey number in the application not matching the 7/12.
• Bank account not in the applicant's name, or an incorrect IFSC, which causes the transfer to fail.
• No certified spraying bill, leaving nothing on which to compute 90%.
• Aadhaar OTP failure during registration because the mobile number is not linked to Aadhaar. This is fixed at an Aadhaar Seva Kendra, not on i-Khedut.
• Ceiling already used, an account that has drawn the 5-acre limit for a spraying round cannot draw more for the same round.

Where do I get help or file a grievance?

The i-Khedut portal carries a public contacts page at ikhedut.gujarat.gov.in/Public/frm_Public_Contacts.aspx listing the offices to approach. In practice the first point of contact is your Taluka Agriculture Officer or the District Agriculture Officer, who is also the sanctioning authority for this component. Scheme guidelines for the Directorate of Agriculture are published on dag.gujarat.gov.in.

No agent can charge you a fee to get your name added to an i-Khedut scheme, and no officer will ask for the OTP sent to your Aadhaar-linked mobile number.