The current instrument is DGMS (Tech) Circular 7 of 2025, dated 20 November 2025. It does not use the words reversing alarm. It names 6 statutory compliance items, and three of them are detection devices on the machine. In 2025 transport machinery accounted for 16 fatal accidents across coal and metal mines.
Surveyed, installed and commissioned by our own engineers.
Three deployment models, and nobody is subcontracted.
They trust VB
01 Installed and running
Three figures and nothing else. The accident numbers further down this page are DGMS figures, not ours, and they are labelled as such wherever they appear.
100+
Plants and sites running VijAI
18,200+
Unsafe acts recorded
0
New cameras required to start
Source · VijAI deployment register, September 2026. Figures are counts of recorded events and installed sites, not outcomes.
02 The instrument
Most people searching for this are not asking a question. They are looking for a document they cannot find, which is why the search results for it are full of PDFs, exam notes and the word download.
The phrase typed into the search box is usually dgms circular reversing alarm hemm, and it returns pdfs, downloads and exam notes because no one has simply set the requirement out. So here it is.
DGMS (Tech) Circular No. 7 of 2025, issued from Dhanbad and dated 20 November 2025, addressed to all Owners, Agents and Managers of opencast coal and metalliferous mines and to OEMs. Its subject line is ensuring safety features in HEMM and auxiliary equipment used in open cast coal and metal mines, for preventing fatal accidents, serious accidents and dangerous occurrences.
It never uses the phrase "reversing alarm". That is the phrase the industry searches with, carried over from the older circulars and from the IS standard. What the 2025 circular asks for is broader and harder: proximity warning, anti-collision, and a warning system for operator fatigue.
Under the heading Statutory Compliance and Documentation it sets out six items.
G.S.R. 987(E) of 1 October 2018, on safety features and devices in HEMM including trucks and tippers, under Regulation 216(2) of the Coal Mines Regulations 2017. The braking requirement is called out by name in that notification, to be satisfied before a tipper is deployed into operations. Implementation per the Bureau of Indian Standard amendment 1 of 2024 in IS 17055 Part 6, and the provisions listed in DGMS (Tech) Circular 06 of 2020, are both to be ensured.
Wider adoption and usage of a proximity warning device or system, for adequate and timely alert generation to the dumper and tipper operator, across all operating wheeled trackless transportation machinery in opencast mines. Read with the IS 17055 Part 6 amendment of 2024 and with the safe operating procedure framed for dumper operation under Regulation 63(g).
Appropriate mechanical anti-collision devices, for all different capacities of wheeled trackless transportation machinery. The words to notice are all different capacities. A fleet solution fitted to the large dumpers and not to the smaller ones does not answer this item.
A warning system to detect operator fatigue, together with an ergonomically designed cabin able to cope with varying weather, shall be provided in dumpers and tippers. This sits in the same list as the proximity and anti-collision items, not in a footnote, and it is the item most mines have no answer to at all.
A separate haul road for light motor vehicles plying in the mine premises, as required by clause 7 of gazette notification G.S.R. 976(E) of 1 October 2018 on conditions for haul roads, under Regulation 101. The only item on the list that is civil work rather than equipment or paper.
Every person employed or to be employed to operate heavy earth moving machinery, tippers and dumpers included, shall be trained, and their competency shall be evaluated by a board constituted by management whose members are not connected with imparting the training. Training modules are to be built around the size, capacity, type and manufacturer of the equipment.
Six items, read off the two pages of the circular itself rather than from a summary. Clause wording is paraphrased for readability and is not reproduced verbatim. Read the circular before you rely on this page · it is two pages long and it is published openly by DGMS.
A mine that answers only the newest circular will still be asked about the older ones, because the newest one incorporates them by reference rather than replacing them.
| Instrument | Date | What it added |
|---|---|---|
| G.S.R. 987(E) | 1 Oct 2018 | The gazette notification on safety features and devices in HEMM, under Regulation 216(2). Everything later sits on top of this. |
| DGMS (Tech) Circular 06 of 2020 | 2020 | Listed the provisions to implement across all wheeled trackless transport machinery. Still live · the 2025 circular restates it as something to be ensured. |
| IS 17055 Part 6, amendment 1 | 2024 | The technical standard the proximity requirement is read against. Named twice in the 2025 circular. |
| DGMS (Tech) Circular 03 of 2024 | 2024 | dgms tech circular 03 of 2024 · ensuring safety in opencast coal mines, HEMM. The circular most mines are currently working to. |
| DGMS (Tech) Circular 7 of 2025 | 20 Nov 2025 | The current one. Widens the address from coal to coal and metalliferous mines, and names operator fatigue as a required warning system. |
The practical consequence is a proximity detection system for mines india is no longer a procurement preference. It is an item on a statutory compliance list, read against a named Indian standard, for every operating wheeled trackless machine in an opencast mine.
One fleet, one sheet, anonymised. No mine named, no state named, never a site of ours.
HEMM SAFETY-FEATURE POSITION DGMS (Tech) Circular 7 of 2025
MINE ............................ FLEET SIZE ...... DATE ..........
Wheeled trackless units in scope, by capacity:
.......................................................
01 GAZETTE G.S.R. 987(E) + BRAKING REQUIREMENT
units covered ...... / ...... brake test record held? Y / N
held by ..............................................
02 PROXIMITY WARNING DEVICE / SYSTEM
units fitted ...... / ...... units NOT fitted, and why:
.......................................................
IS 17055 Part 6 am.1 of 2024 referenced in the spec? Y / N
Dumper SOP under Reg 63(g) in force? Y / N
IS THERE A RECORD THAT IT WAS WORKING ON A GIVEN SHIFT? Y / N
03 MECHANICAL ANTI-COLLISION DEVICE
units fitted ...... / ...... ALL capacities covered? Y / N
04 OPERATOR FATIGUE WARNING SYSTEM
units fitted ...... / ...... cabin ergonomics assessed? Y / N
05 SEPARATE HAUL ROAD FOR LMV G.S.R. 976(E) cl.7, Reg 101
provided on ..........................................
NOT provided on ......................................
06 COMPETENCY EVALUATION
operators trained ......
board constituted? Y / N
ANY BOARD MEMBER CONNECTED WITH IMPARTING TRAINING? Y / N
(if Y, the condition in the circular is not met)
SIGNED .................... DATE .......... NEXT REVIEW ..........
Take it into your own system. The one line worth keeping exactly as written is the third question under item 02, because fitment and function are two different records and only one of them is usually held.
Current against · DGMS (Tech) Circular No. 7 of 2025, dated 20 November 2025 · DGMS (Tech) Circular 03 of 2024 · DGMS (Tech) Circular 06 of 2020 · gazette notifications G.S.R. 987(E) and G.S.R. 976(E), both of 1 October 2018 · the Coal Mines Regulations, 2017, Regulations 63(g), 101 and 216(2) · IS 17055 Part 6, amendment 1 of 2024. Re-verified October 2026.
Item 02 asks for adoption and usage. Those are two words and they are two different records.
A fitment record is a purchase and an installation date. It is easy to hold and most fleets hold it well. A usage record answers a different question: was the device powered, unobstructed and alerting on the shift when the accident did not happen, and on the shift when it did.
This is where most sites have nothing. The device is on the machine, the invoice is in the file, and there is no way to answer the question of whether it was doing anything on the eleventh of the month.
The DGMS figures in the circular are what give that gap its weight. For 2025 it records 38 fatal accidents in coal and 22 in metalliferous mines, involving 49 and 39 fatalities. Of those, 12 fatal accidents in coal and 4 in metal were related to transport machinery such as dumpers and tippers. It also records 31 and 5 serious accidents from transport machinery in the two sectors, causing serious injury to 31 and 8 persons.
Those are DGMS's own figures, reproduced from the circular. They are not VijAI figures and they are not presented as an outcome of anything we do.
Each of those is a condition of how a fleet was assembled and how a requirement moved, never a failure by anybody at the mine.
Item 02 is the one with a gap in it, and the gap is the word usage.
Your fitment list is probably in good order. Most are. What almost no fleet holds is the second record the circular asks for in the same sentence: that the device was powered, unobstructed and generating a timely alert during a shift. A camera already pointed at the tip head produces exactly that, for every machine movement, across a period, without anybody standing at the tip head.
That is the half of item 02 that is unevidenced on most sites, and it is the half we do. One record per movement: the time, the direction, whether the zone behind the machine was occupied, and whether an alert condition existed. Read against your own fitment list, it tells you in a month which machines are carrying a device that is doing nothing.
Item 04 is the one with nothing in it at all. A warning system to detect operator fatigue is required in dumpers and tippers, it sits in the same list as proximity and anti-collision, and on the worked sheet above it was 0 of 34. Fatigue is a camera problem. If that line on your own sheet is blank, it is the first conversation to have and it is the one most likely to be raised at your next inspection.
One line so nothing is misread, and we say it to an inspector as readily as we say it here. VijAI evidences what happened. Items 02 and 03 name devices fitted to the machine, and the duty to fit them stays with those devices. We report on the fleet; we are not a machinery safety function and we do not stop a machine.
Deployment is on-premise, hybrid or cloud. Underground connectivity and the distance from the pit to the control room usually decide it, and on an opencast site that conversation happens at the survey rather than on a quotation. The survey is also what tells you how much of the tip head and the junctions your present camera positions already see.
L0 · THE MODULE
What vehicle and machine detection does across a site, and the conditions it works in.
The module →ACROSS · THE RANGE
What else runs on cameras a site already has, from PPE compliance to evacuation muster.
All solutions →NEXT · ONE TIP HEAD
Which of your existing cameras already cover the tip heads and junctions, and what a month of records from one of them looks like.
Talk to us →Sources · DGMS (Tech) Circular No. 7 of 2025, Dhanbad, 20 November 2025, read in full · DGMS (Tech) Circular 03 of 2024 and 06 of 2020, as named within it · gazette notifications G.S.R. 987(E) and G.S.R. 976(E), both 1 October 2018 · the Coal Mines Regulations, 2017 · IS 17055 Part 6, amendment 1 of 2024, Bureau of Indian Standards. Named in text and not linked, so nothing on this page sends a reader away from it. The circular is published openly by DGMS and is two pages long.
03 How it runs
The first question IT asks is where the video goes. All three answers are here, and detection by default with identification optional applies to every one of them.
| Model | Where the video is processed | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|
| On-premise edge | Entirely inside the plant. Nothing leaves your network. | Licensed areas, sites with a data-residency rule, and plants with no dependable outbound link. |
| HybridRecommended | Detection at the edge, dashboards and reporting hosted. Footage stays on site. Only events leave. | Most plants. Video stays inside the boundary and head office still gets one view across every site. |
| Cloud | Processing and storage hosted. | Single sites, short pilots, and estates already running their VMS this way. |
The model is chosen in the survey, against your network and your data rules. It is not a price tier.
04 Who installs it
Survey, engineering, installation, commissioning, calibration, training and support are all done by VB people. When a camera angle is wrong on a Sunday night, the person who fixes it is the person who chose it.
05 The five we are asked
Circular 06 of 2020 listed the safety provisions to be implemented across all wheeled trackless transport machinery. It is not superseded. Circular 7 of 2025 restates it as something to be ensured, so a mine answering the 2025 circular is answering the 2020 one as well.
Circular 7 of 2025 sets out six items under Statutory Compliance and Documentation. They are not six devices. Three are equipment, one is a haul road, one is training and competency, and the first is a gazette notification to be complied with in full.
They are issued as circulars rather than as a single code, which is why they are hard to find. For transport machinery in opencast mines the current chain runs from Circular 06 of 2020 through Circular 03 of 2024 to Circular 7 of 2025, each one building on the last.
Circular 7 of 2025 calls for wider adoption and usage of a proximity warning device or system in all operating wheeled trackless transportation machinery in opencast mines, read with the IS 17055 Part 6 amendment of 2024 and the dumper safe operating procedure.
Circular 7 of 2025 states that a warning system to detect operator fatigue, with an ergonomically designed cabin, shall be provided in dumpers and tippers. It is listed alongside the proximity and anti-collision items rather than as an optional extra.
06 The next step
Bring your HEMM safety-feature sheet to the call, even half filled. The blank lines are the useful part.
Send an enquiry