Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In a major push to enhance the country’s infrastructure, including the roads and railways, the Network Planning Group (NPG), constituted under the PM GatiShakti initiative in 2021, has recommended for approval 208 big-ticket infrastructure projects of various ministries so far, the media reported on Saturday.
These projects are worth a whopping Rs. 15.39 lakh crore.
“So far, 208 projects have been assessed under the initiative worth Rs 15.39 lakh crore,” said Amardeep Singh Bhatia, Secretary of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).
The maximum number of projects recommended by the group are related to roads (101), railways (73), urban development (12), and four from the oil and gas ministry.
The inter-ministerial NPG meets every fortnight and appraises infra projects to ensure multi-modality, synchronization of efforts, and comprehensive development in and around the project location.
The initiative, launched on October 13, 2021, aimed to develop an integrated infrastructure to reduce logistics costs. All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing investments of over Rs 500 crore are routed through the NPG.
The NPG’s approval is mandatory before the clearance of the project by the Public Investment Board (PIB) or Department of Expenditure under the Finance Ministry.
The NMP (National Master Plan) has over 1,600 layers of geospatial data, showing all physical and social infrastructure of an area and land records in one place. It has been designed for faster planning and better design so that the impact of an investment is maximized.
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 Union Cabinet.
Over 1,600 layers of data, including those related to land, ports, forests, and highways, are available on the portal.
Usage of the portal by different ministries, including social sector departments and states, is increasing, and it is helping in the proper planning of projects, Bhatia said.
Altogether 156 critical infrastructure gaps to ports and for the movement of bulk commodities like coal, cement, fertilisers and foodgrains, have been identified for intervention under the PM Gati Shakti initiative.
The department is working with states for the integration of updated land record data. Besides, he said that Nepal and Sri Lanka have shown keen interest in this initiative.
“We can roll it for them also. With Sri Lanka, we are working out the things,” he said.
Bhatia said that the department is also working to roll out the initiative at the district level. “In the next 1-2 months, we should be able to roll it out.”