PM Gati Shakti national master plan initiative gets award for excellence

New Delhi: PM Gati Shakti national master plan initiative, launched in October 2021 for integrated and planned development of critical infrastructure projects to reduce logistics costs, received an award for excellence in public administration-2022 from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday. Secretary in the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) Anurag Jain received the award at the 16th Civil Services Day.

Modi conferred these awards for excellence in public administration for effective implementation of identified priority programmes and innovation to implementing units, and central and state organisations.

The prime minister's awards for excellence in public administration have been instituted to recognise the extraordinary and innovative work done by districts, and organisations of the central and state governments for people's welfare.

The commerce and industry ministry's initiative has received the award under innovation (centre) category.

All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing investment of over Rs 500 crore, route through the network planning group (NPG) constituted under the initiative. A GIS enabled national master plan digital platform has also been developed and over 1,300 data layers are uploaded by the Centre and states on this platform.

Data related to land records, ports, forest, schools, railway stations, water bodies, telecom towers, and highways are available on the portal.
For example, if the railway is planning a project on a specified route, so by putting the relevant data/information on the PM Gati Shakti national master plan portal/platform before finalising the DPR (detailed project report), it can see whether the proposed track is crossing through public land or private property or forest or canal or highways and accordingly make changes without visiting the area physically.

The aim is to improve logistics efficiency by reducing the time and cost of transportation, simplifying procedures and creating an efficient logistics ecosystem.

By the use of this platform, the DPRs are getting ready in 2-3 months (including ground truthing). Earlier it used to take 6-8 months through simultaneous visualisation of all relevant details available on the platform.
Citing an example, it said that using the platform, the railways ministry got 405 final location surveys sanctioned in 2022-23 as compared to 57 in 2021-22.

So far about 76 key infrastructure projects worth about Rs 5.14 lakh crore of different ministries have been evaluated under the initiative in the last one year. These projects pertain to different ministries including roads and highways; oil and natural gas; housing and urban affairs; and new and renewable energy.