PM Gati Shakti: 156 critical infra gap projects identified

PM Gati Shakti: 156 critical infra gap projects identified

Subject :Schemes

PM Gati Shakti

• “PM Gati Shakti — National Master Plan” for infrastructure development aims at boosting multimodal connectivity and driving down logistics costs.
• PM Gati Shakti is a digital platform that connects 16 ministries — including Roads and Highways, Railways, Shipping, Petroleum and Gas, Power, Telecom, Shipping, and Aviation — with a view to ensuring holistic planning and execution of infrastructure projects.
• The portal will offer 200 layers of geospatial data, including on existing infrastructure such as roads, highways, railways, and toll plazas, as well as geographic information about forests, rivers and district boundaries to aid in planning and obtaining clearances.
• The portal will also allow various government departments to track, in real time and at one centralised place, the progress of various projects, especially those with multi-sectoral and multi-regional impact.
• The objective is to ensure that each and every department now have visibility of each other’s activities providing critical data while planning and execution of projects in a comprehensive manner.
• Through this, different departments will be able to prioritise their projects through cross–sectoral interactions.
• The government expects the platform to enable various government departments to synchronise their efforts into a multi-modal network.
• It will also offer satellite imagery for monitoring of projects.
• It is also expected to help state governments give commitments to investors regarding timeframes for the creation of infrastructure.
• The portal would help states avoid both cost and time overruns, and allow them to provide the benefit of valuable infrastructure to their residents sooner.

Network Planning Group

• Infrastructure projects, entailing investment of over₹500 crore, would now route through the network planning group (NPG) constituted under the PM Gati Shakti initiative with the Finance Ministry issuing the necessary instructions and creation of the national masterplan digital platform.
• NPG consists of heads of the network planning wing of respective infrastructure ministries and it will assist the empowered group of secretaries (EGOS), which is headed by the cabinet secretary. EGOS consists of secretaries of 18 ministries as members and Head of Logistics Division, under the DPIIT, as member convener.
• The PM Gati Shakti plan was announced last year with an aim to break departmental silos and bring in more holistic and integrated planning and execution of projects with a view to addressing the issues of multi-modal and last-mile connectivity.

How will this impact coordination between ministries for projects?

• Currently, any inter-ministerial issues that arise relating to a project are addressed in regular meetings of infrastructure-related ministries. These issues are raised in advance, and then taken up.
• Goyal said that through the PM PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation) portal, many issues were resolved even prior to such meetings.
• He said the Gati Shakti portal would help reduce the human intervention required as ministries will be in constant touch, and projects will be reviewed by the project monitoring group in real time.
• The portal will also highlight all the clearances any new project would need, based on its location — and allow stakeholders to apply for these clearances from the relevant authority directly on the portal.