Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan on 13 October to provide multi-modal connectivity infrastructure to various economic zones.

The project is the brainchild of the prime minister who has been a strong advocate of ending silos in government functioning and bringing more inter-departmental and ministerial synergies.

The prime minister had announced 'PM Gati Shakti — National Master Plan' in his Independence Day speech on 15 August this year.

Explaining how PM Gati Shakti plan will bring about a conceptual change, an official said that it will break inter-ministerial silos and integrate the planning and designing of projects with a common and holistic vision, enhance India's global competitiveness through next-generation infrastructure and seamless multi-modal connectivity, ensure seamless movement of goods and people and enhance the ease of living as well as the ease of doing business. At the initial stage, the national master plan will include 16 ministries including railways, civil aviation, petroleum, MEITY, shipping, road transport, textiles and food processing.

An empowered group of secretaries, headed by the Cabinet secretary, will be formed for quick decision-making and DIPP will be the nodal agency. Gati Shakti seeks to use technologies like Geographic Information System-based Enterprise Resource Planning with 200+ layers of evidence-based decision-making besides planning tools for route planning, dashboard-based periodic monitoring and latest satellite imagery. BISAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics) is designing its interface. It also uses satellite imagery available from ISRO and base maps from the Survey of India. Visualisation of BISAG maps will be available to people at large including the private sector, thus bringing efficiency.

There will be a conceptual change in the functions of government. With this application, a holistic, integrated approach will be followed and there will be real-time coordination among various departments. The move will increase efficiency and will also save money on projects, an official said. Initially, the portal will have 200 layers in which 16 ministries will put all available data about the active projects to be completed by 2024- 25. Concerned projects will be mapped on the interface. Forests, eco-sensitive zones, archaeological sites and land needs will be among the factors to be mapped. Officials familiar with the project said, "you can go down to plot-level details".

"When a department plans a project, they have all this information. This will lead to integrated planning, decision support system will also be integrated. At the planning level, you will have all the data," a source said.

"With so many layers, data of railways, NHAI, telecom, IT department, gas pipelines, civil aviation's hopping ports, all this will be put together," the source added.

There is also gap analysis available in the system. Ahead of the launch, state governments were also approached and most of them showed a willingness to join the project. Officials said this will add more synergy.

In later stages data will also be provided to private partners in various projects and this will solve the problem of coordination, the source said.

An Integrated Multimodal Network Planning Group (NPG) with heads of Network Planning Division of all connectivity infrastructure ministries and departments will be responsible for unified planning and integration of the proposals.

A workshop for stakeholders at three levels will also be organised after the launch in Delhi.

-- With inputs from ANI