Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and Textiles, Piyush Goyal chaired a review meeting on PM GatiShakti with V K Tripathi, Chairman, Railway Board, Sanjeev Ranjan, Secretary, Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, Rajiv Bansal, Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, Anurag Jain, Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry & Internal Trade and senior officials from all other infrastructure Ministries/Departments.
The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (NMP) is an integrated plan depicting all the existing and proposed development initiatives of various Ministries/Departments for better synergy.
The NMP will help in achieving the objective of an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ by providing visibility to various stakeholders involved in development of infrastructure. It will incorporate the infrastructure schemes of various Ministries and State Governments. Economic Zones like textile clusters, pharmaceutical clusters, defense corridors, electronic parks, industrial corridors, fishing clusters and agri zones will also be covered under the master plan.
This will boost economic growth, attract investments and enhance the country’s global competitiveness.
During a presentation made by Special Secretary, Logistics Division, DPIIT, the ministry wise progress on the targets set under the PM GatiShakti were discussed. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has completed 1,41,190 Kms of National Highways as on 31st March 2022 out of the set target of 2,00,000 kms for 2024-25.
Similarly, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has completed laying of gas pipeline of 20,000 kms out of 34,500 for the same time period. The Ministry of Power has already surpassed its target for laying of the transmission network of 4,54,200 kms till the end of March 2022.
The Department of Telecommunication has created the OFC network of 33,00,997 kms as on 31st March 2022 against the set target of 50,00,000 kms for 2024-25.
It was noted during the meeting that institutional framework has been brought into action. Accordingly, the apex body – an Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS) under the Chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary has been constituted to approve any changes in the Master Plan for meeting any emerging requirements. An integrated Multimodal Network Planning Group (NPG) has been operationalized with representation from various connectivity infrastructure Ministries/Departments involving their heads of Network Planning Division for unified planning and integration of the proposals and assist the EGoS.
States have been on-boarded and institutional set-up has been constituted in states as well to streamline and demonstrate the concept of PM GatiShakti. Empowered Group of Secretaries has been constituted in 25 states, Network Planning Group is functional in 9 states and Technical Support Unit has been set up in 6 states. The capacity building exercise for the officials of the Central ministries/departments and states Government has been completed.
The benefits and on-ground impact of the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan portal were also illustrated. Various ministries/departments and state governments have started using this portal for integration and synchronization of implementation efforts, optimization of cost, and time at the stage of planning of infrastructure projects.
To achieve its objective to provide 50 Mbps of bandwidth to the citizens under the National Broadband Mission, planning for connecting all the non-fiberized towers through the OFC is being done through the PM GatiShakti NMP. All the non-fiberized towers and existing OFC Network is mapped on the Department of Telecommunication GatiShakti Portal.
Based on the data and Planning criteria, the tool is being developed to get the length of required OFC and cost of OFC Laying.
The portal has also been used by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), Ministry of Railways for firming the alignment for the East-West, East-Coast, and North-South Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) to minimize disruption, cost and time overruns in project implementation.
To meet the rising demand for air connectivity, the Ministry of Civil Aviation AAI (MoCA) has used this portal to identify the land acquisition requirements, land use analysis and road connectivity for the expansion of the Jolly Grant Airport, Dehradun, Uttarakhand. AAI benefitted in terms of timely planning, and cost-saving as use of this portal replaced the need for a physical survey.
Highlighting the potential of the PM GatiShakti NMP, the Minister emphasized that improved multimodal connectivity to various economic zones will ensure seamless movement of goods and people. PM GatiShakti NMP portal will provide a bird’s eye view of infrastructure and facilitate better network planning and faster clearances.
In his concluding remarks, he expressed satisfaction on the wide adoption of the NMP by central ministries/departments and states. He appreciated the positive on-ground impact of PM GatiShakti and lauded the good work done by all infrastructure ministries in an integrated manner to realize the objectives of the PM GatiShakti.
He provided future guidance on developing robust mechanisms for tracking the progress of projects, futuristic scenario building based on the impact generated and mitigation requirements, collecting feedback to improve the portal, and problem statements of different stakeholders to develop solutions/use cases/functionalities.