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Sixty-six big-ticket infrastructure projects worth about Rs 5 lakh crore of different ministries including road and railways have been recommended by the Network Planning Group (NPG) constituted under the PM GatiShakti initiative, since last October, a senior official said here on Thursday.
Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Special Secretary 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 last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the GatiShakti-National Master Plan aimed at developing integrated infrastructure to reduce logistic costs. All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing an investment of over Rs 500 crore, are routed through the NPG, constituted under the PM GatiShakti initiative. "66 big ticket projects (worth more than Rs 500 crore), with costs of these projects coming to be about Rs 5 lakh crore, have been assessed on GatiShakti principles in the last eight months," Dawra told reporters here. These projects include Gurdaspur-Jammu-Srinagar natural gas pipeline worth Rs 6931 crore; Chennai-Trichy-Tuticorin Express 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 had approached the NPG first for approval before making a 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 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 the proper planning of projects, she said. The NPG consists of heads of the network planning wing of respective infrastructure ministries and will assist the Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGOS), which is headed by the cabinet secretary. (ANI)
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