India's space sector is expanding rapidly, but the country still lacks a comprehensive law governing space activities. As private participation grows, questions of regulation, technology transfer, liability and institutional accountability can no longer remain unresolved.

India has opened its space sector to private enterprise, invited private capital into an industry once dominated by the public sector and created a regulatory architecture intended to facilitate that transition. Yet one essential piece of the framework is still missing: India does not have a Space Act.

The government has been working towards legislation for years, and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology has now described the need for a comprehensive legal framework as clear and pressing. Its latest report says the Department of Space is drafting a Bill and welcomes the initiative, but the proposed legislation has yet to become law.

That raises a question that goes beyond the familiar demand for faster reform. What, precisely, is holding up the legislation at a time when India's space programme is expanding rapidly and private companies are already being invited to participate in activities involving launch vehicles, infrastructure, technology and space-based services?

The question is particularly important because the absence of legislation is no longer occurring in a relatively closed public-sector space programme. Since the 2020 decision to open the sector, India has created IN-SPACe as an autonomous, single-window agency to promote, enable, authorise and supervise space activities by non-governmental entities. But the legal foundation for that regulatory architecture remains incomplete. The Parliamentary Committee's March 2026 report explicitly welcomed the Department of Space's initiative to draft a Space Activities Bill and said the legislation should provide a robust, transparent and forward-looking framework for the orderly development of the sector.

A legal vacuum in a rapidly changing sector

The absence of a Space Act matters because India's space sector is no longer confined to government missions. Private companies are being encouraged to build launch vehicles and satellites, provide space-based services and use government space infrastructure. IN-SPACe itself describes its role as promoting, enabling, authorising and supervising such activities.

Yet a regulatory framework created largely through policy decisions and administrative arrangements is not the same thing as a comprehensive statute enacted by Parliament. A law can define powers, duties, liabilities, rights, offences, safeguards and mechanisms of accountability in a manner that executive policy cannot permanently substitute for.

The issue becomes sharper when public infrastructure and publicly developed technologies are placed in arrangements involving private companies. The recent controversy over the proposed operation and maintenance of the new Small Satellite Launch Complex at Kulasekarapattinam illustrates the problem. IN-SPACe invited Indian private entities to operate and maintain the facility, with ISRO to provide technical guidance, operational support, training and handholding during the transition.

The arrangement raises questions that should ideally be settled by a clear statutory framework rather than left principally to administrative and contractual arrangements. If ISRO trains the personnel of a private operator, the contractor employs them and pays their salaries, and the facility is handling launch operations, who ultimately bears responsibility if there is an accident? What happens when an operational error occurs? Where does technical liability end and contractual liability begin? What is the legal position of the government, ISRO and the private operator?

These are not arguments against private operation. They are arguments for clear law before the transfer of operational responsibility becomes routine

Why the timing matters

The Parliamentary Committee has itself recognised that the space sector is entering a period of extraordinary expansion. Its report refers to Gaganyaan, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and the Next Generation Launch Vehicle as major elements of India's Space Vision 2047. It has urged the Department of Space to adhere to programme timelines and avoid delays.

The legislative framework therefore cannot be treated as a peripheral administrative matter. It is part of the infrastructure required for the next phase of India's space programme.

The absence of legislation also leaves unresolved the precise relationship between the principal institutions involved. ISRO develops technologies, infrastructure and missions. NewSpace India Limited was created to commercialise ISRO's services, technologies and rockets. IN-SPACe was created principally to regulate and facilitate the participation of non-governmental entities.

Former ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair has argued that these institutional distinctions need to be preserved. In his recent interview with The Federal, he said ISRO, NSIL and industrialisation should remain under one roof with unity of direction and command, while IN-SPACe should remain an independent regulator. He suggested that NSIL could form joint ventures with interested companies rather than simply transferring ISRO technologies. Nair also recalled the longstanding role of industry in the space programme, noting that nearly 60 per cent of ISRO's budget had historically been spent with industry on sourcing systems and components.

That argument becomes especially relevant when the country is simultaneously trying to legislate for private participation and determine the institutional authority for technology transfer, commercialisation and access to public infrastructure.

Who regulates whom?

The Parliamentary Committee has identified another institutional complication. Under the Indian Space Policy 2023, the authorisation mechanism currently applies even to government entities including ISRO and other agencies under the Department of Space. But these agencies already operate under the administrative oversight of the Department of Space and the Space Commission. The Committee has warned that requiring them to obtain authorisation from IN-SPACe could create an additional procedural layer within government. It has therefore recommended that IN-SPACe's authorisation mechanism primarily regulate and facilitate non-governmental entities and that authorisation for ISRO and other Department of Space agencies may gradually be dispensed with.

That recommendation is important to the legislative debate. A Space Act cannot merely give statutory recognition to an existing arrangement. It must clarify the boundaries between policy-making, scientific development, commercialisation and regulation.

The institutional question is particularly pertinent because the Chairman of IN-SPACe, Dr Pawan Kumar Goenka, is also a member of the Space Commission. ISRO's official listing confirms his membership of the Commission. The issue is not personal. It is structural: when the head of a sectoral regulator also sits on the apex policy and oversight body, the law should make the respective responsibilities and safeguards against institutional overlap unmistakably clear.

The recent controversy over the Kulasekarapattinam launch complex makes that question more than theoretical. The Federal has reported that the Department of Space and IN-SPACe leadership declined to clarify whether the Department had expressly authorised IN-SPACe to facilitate the transfer of operational control of the publicly funded launch facility to a private company. Industry officials have also questioned whether technology transfer of ISRO assets falls within IN-SPACe's mandate.

A statute should leave little room for such uncertainty.

Technology transfer needs a legal foundation

Technology transfer is indispensable if India wants a competitive private space industry. But technology transfer can mean very different things. It can involve licensing a technology for a defined purpose, manufacturing under an agreed arrangement, a joint venture in which the originating institution retains a continuing stake, or a more complete transfer in which the recipient becomes the principal commercial beneficiary.

The distinction matters because the technologies in question have been developed through decades of public investment. Nair's preference for NSIL-led joint ventures rather than simply transferring technologies is therefore significant. It offers a possible middle path between keeping technologies within ISRO and transferring them out without a continuing institutional stake.

The Parliamentary Committee has independently raised concerns about this balance of value. It has called for a more competitive and market-aligned framework for determining technology-transfer costs and for periodic third-party audits of technology-transfer agreements. That makes the Space Act relevant not merely to licensing and authorisation but to the broader question of how public technological assets are commercialised.

There is another dimension. Nair has cautioned that some rocket technologies can have dual-use applications and therefore require safeguards and an appropriate legal framework. His comparison with the nuclear sector is instructive: he has pointed to the separation between the commercial entity NPCIL and the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, arguing that a regulator should not become the executor of programmes.

The same principle should inform space legislation. A regulator should not acquire functions that properly belong to the scientific or commercial institutions whose activities it regulates.

The law must settle liability

The liability question may ultimately be one of the most important reasons for Parliament to act.

India's space ambitions increasingly involve private launch companies, private satellite operators, shared infrastructure and commercial access to launch facilities. The legal system must therefore answer questions that cannot be left indefinitely to individual contracts.

If a privately operated launch facility suffers an accident, who is legally responsible? If the private operator has been trained and technically supported by ISRO, does that affect liability? If a privately operated facility depends on systems, expertise or infrastructure supplied by ISRO, where does responsibility lie? What insurance must be maintained? What happens when an accident causes damage to third parties?

These questions are precisely why the absence of a comprehensive statute becomes more serious as private participation expands. A regulatory regime should establish predictable rules before disputes and accidents test the boundaries of administrative authority.

What is actually delaying the Bill?

The Parliamentary Standing Committee's March 2026 report provides an important clue. It says the Department of Space is drafting the Bill and welcomes the initiative. But the report does not indicate when the legislation will be introduced in Parliament.

That leaves the central question unanswered.

India has already taken the political decision to open the space sector. It has already created IN-SPACe. It has already allowed private companies to enter activities across the space value chain. It is already dealing with technology transfers, private access to public infrastructure and operational arrangements involving private entities.

Yet the comprehensive law that should define the boundaries of this new ecosystem remains pending.

The irony is difficult to miss. The government wants India to become a major global space power and has set out an ambitious Space Vision 2047. But the legal architecture governing the rapidly expanding commercial side of that ambition is still being assembled.

This is not an argument for hurried legislation. A badly drafted Space Act could create problems of its own. The law must get the balance right between encouraging private investment and protecting strategic capabilities, between regulation and innovation, between commercialisation and public interest, and between executive flexibility and parliamentary accountability.

But precisely because the stakes are so high, the country deserves greater clarity about the legislative timetable.

Fine-tuning the reform before it becomes irreversible

The Parliamentary Committee has already offered one important direction: IN-SPACe's authorisation mechanism should primarily serve non-governmental entities, while duplication of approvals for ISRO and other Department of Space agencies should be reduced.

The wider reform should follow the same principle. The law should clearly distinguish ISRO's scientific and technological role, NSIL's commercialisation role and IN-SPACe's regulatory role. It should establish transparent rules for technology transfer, protect the value of publicly developed technologies, define liability for commercial space activities and establish clear accountability when public infrastructure is operated by private entities.

It should also prevent the regulatory system from becoming an additional layer of operational decision-making. A launch vehicle cannot wait indefinitely for administrative clarity, nor can a strategic programme afford uncertainty about who has the authority to approve, delay or alter a mission.

India's private space sector should be allowed to grow. Indeed, it must grow if the country is to realise its ambitions. But private success should strengthen, not diminish, the national technological institutions that made that success possible.

The Space Act should therefore not be viewed simply as another piece of legislation needed to facilitate private investment. It is an opportunity to define the institutional architecture of India's next space age.

The question is no longer whether India needs a Space Act. The government has itself acknowledged that need. The question is why the country is still waiting for the law that will give its space-sector reforms a clear statutory foundation.

And that is a question Parliament and the public deserve to have answered.