As many as 66 big-ticket infrastructure projects worth about Rs 5 lakh crore of different ministries have been recommended for approval under the PM GatiShakti initiative so far this fiscal, a senior official said on Thursday. These projects have been recommended by the Network Planning Group (NPG) constituted under the PM GatiShakti initiative launched in October last year.
Special secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Sumita Dawra said that every ministry should adopt the PM GatiShakti concept up to the field level so that every district collector, officer and state is equally involved in it.
On October 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gati Shakti- National Master Plan aimed at developing an integrated infrastructure to reduce logistic costs.
All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing investments of over Rs 500 crore, are routed through the NPG.
“66 big-ticket projects (each worth more than Rs 500 crore). Costs of these projects are coming to be about Rs 5 lakh crore have been assessed on Gati Shakti principles in the last 8 months,” Dawra told reporters here.
These projects include Gurdaspur-Jammu-Srinagar natural gas pipeline worth Rs 6,931 crore; Chennai-Trichy-Tuticorin Exp project worth Rs 30,502 crore and Marwar industrial cluster worth Rs 922 crore.
The NPG has representations from various connectivity infrastructure ministries/ departments involving their heads of network planning division for unified planning and integration of the proposals.
All these departments approach the NPG first for approval before making a DPR (detailed project report) at the planning stage. After the NPG’s clearance, the project follows the normal procedure of approval by the finance ministry and the Cabinet, depending upon the projects.
She said that time taken for DPR has been reduced from six months due to the use of a national master plan portal.
Over 1,000 layers of data, including those related to land, ports, forest, and highways, are available on the portal, Dawra added.
Usage of the portal by different ministries including social sector departments and states are increasing and it is helping in proper planning of projects, she said.
