Call Before You Dig in India – App, Rules and GPR Survey

Updated: 23 October 2026

What is Call Before You Dig in India?

Call before you dig is a simple idea: anyone planning to excavate should first tell the owners of buried assets in that area, so those owners can warn them or send staff. In India, this idea is put into practice through the Call Before u Dig app, usually shortened to CBuD.

The Department of Telecommunications developed CBuD with BISAG-N, and the Prime Minister launched it on 22 March 2023. At launch it was reported that uncoordinated digging and excavation causes losses of about ₹3,000 crore a year, much of it from cut optical fibre cables. The platform is available as an Android and iOS app and as a web portal.

Its purpose is excavation damage prevention: fewer utility strikes on fibre, power cables, water lines and gas pipelines, and less disruption to the services people rely on.

How does the Call Before u Dig app work?

For excavators

A company or agency that plans to dig registers once with its company name, mobile number, state, district and email, verified by OTP. For each job it submits a dig plan, marks the site on a map and gives the dates and purpose. The system then identifies the asset owners registered for that area.

For asset owners

Asset owners do not sign up on their own. Their user accounts are created by higher-level administrators in a chain from state to district level. Once set up, they receive alerts by SMS, email and in-app notification with the location, dates, purpose and type of enquiry.

Enquiry types and responses

• Emergency – a response expected within 48 hours.
• Normal – a response expected within 7 days.

Owners respond to show whether they have assets at the location, and the excavator tracks the status of each enquiry. The app also lets the excavator call an asset owner directly.

Which terms should excavators know?

• Excavator – in CBuD terms, the company or agency carrying out digging, not just the machine.
• Asset owner – the body that owns a buried utility, such as a telecom operator, DISCOM, water board or gas distributor.
• Utility strike – accidental damage to a buried service during digging or drilling.
• Excavation damage prevention – the set of steps, from notification to careful digging, that keeps strikes from happening.
• Pre-excavation survey – a field survey using GPR, EM locators and records to find services before work.
• Ground marking – paint or pegs showing the line of each detected service on site.

What can the CBuD app not tell you?

CBuD is a coordination tool. It is valuable, but it has clear limits that every site engineer should understand:

• No exact positions. An owner may confirm that it has assets in the area, but the alert does not draw the line of a cable or pipe on the ground.
• No depths. Depth of cover is not part of the exchange, and records held by owners may themselves be out of date.
• Only registered owners. Services of bodies not onboarded, private connections, factory lines and abandoned cables fall outside the alerts.
• Dependent on response. Protection depends on owners replying in time and sending accurate information or staff.
• No check of ground changes. Road widening, raised levels or earlier diversions are not visible through the app.

So the app tells you whom to contact. It does not tell your excavator where to stop. That gap is widest on old city roads, where several generations of services overlap, and on highway verges, where cables are often laid in long runs with few visible markers.

How should a safe dig be planned?

A practical dig safe India routine uses the app as one step among several:

1. Register the dig plan on CBuD early, with an accurate map location and realistic dates.
2. Collect owner records from those who respond, and note who confirms assets in the area.
3. Survey the work area with GPR and an EM locator along the trench line, pits or bore path.
4. Mark detected services on the ground and on a drawing, with approximate depth where it can be judged.
5. Prove critical crossings by trial pit or hand digging; our guide on GPR versus trial pits explains when each is worth it.
6. Brief the crew on marks and safe digging methods before machines start.
7. Keep owners informed and invite their staff where their assets are close.

Why does call before you dig still need a GPR survey?

With ground penetrating radar (GPR), short radar pulses enter the soil and the instrument logs reflections from buried objects, including plastic pipes and ducts that carry no current. An electromagnetic cable locator traces metallic cables and pipes, especially where a signal can be applied. Together they turn a list of possible owners into lines on the ground.

A survey adds what the app leaves out:

• actual plan positions of services in the dig area, owned by registered bodies or not;
• approximate depths, with confidence stated for the local soil and moisture;
• unrecorded and abandoned services that no owner reported;
• a drawing that can be shared with every owner who responded.

Penetration depth is limited in wet clay or salty ground, so survey reports should flag uncertain stretches honestly. Our pre-excavation utility scanning service is built for this step, and the wider GPR survey page explains our route method. The difference between the two detection tools is set out in EM locator versus GPR.

Mezux is a survey company and is not part of, or affiliated with, the CBuD platform or the Department of Telecommunications.

What records should be kept after the dig?

• The CBuD enquiry reference and the responses received from each owner.
• The survey drawing and photographs of ground marks before excavation.
• Trial pit locations and measured depths.
• Any services exposed during work, with positions and depths noted.
• Details of any strike, how it happened and how it was reported.

These records protect the excavator in a dispute and help the next team on the same road. Our article on utility mapping and strike prevention looks at the site practices behind them.

Planning a trench, pit or HDD bore? Register it on CBuD, then send the route through the quote form. Scanning costs ₹24 per metre, GST extra, and a 4 km minimum applies; all slabs and extras are on the price list.