Depts turning to GatiShakti to reduce execution time for infra projects

With this, the time taken for a project can be cut by at least 100 days

Government departments have started making use of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gati Shakti-led digital technology initiative to reduce the execution time for infrastructure projects by about three-four months.

Officials from the ministry of road transport and highways and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) have been attending workshops in Gujarat-based Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) to draft the alignment of five expressways digitally, a senior government official said.

Once alignments are finalised using digital technology, the project will go into the detailed project report (DPR) stage. DPR is an elaborate plan of a project, entailing its planning, design, risks and resources required as well as the gestation period. Development of project alignment at the pre-feasibility stage of an infrastructure project is a critical step towards the preparation of a DPR.

To develop project alignment requires huge cost and time since survey teams need to be present on the ground and manually complete the process.

With the Centre’s push towards Gati Shakti and use of the digital portal, also known as the national masterplan, the alignment can be drawn digitally in less than a week. The task otherwise takes three-four months. Moreover, huge survey costs will be saved, the official said.

“Ministries have started using the Gati Shakti national masterplan for developing project alignment. It is the power of technology and government working together that is changing through PM Gati Shakti,” the official cited above said.

The national masterplan platform has also started providing tools to obtain inter-departmental clearances.

For instance, forest clearances can be obtained online through this portal now, the official added.

The Gati Shakti national masterplan was announced by the Prime Minister in October last year. It is an integrated plan depicting the economic zones and the multimodal connectivity infrastructure. It aims to integrate the interventions of various ministries and government departments as well as address the missing connectivity gaps in such zones.

The next on-ground execution of PM GatiShakti has also started with two projects of the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC).

According to a finance ministry directive in April, government departments and ministries will now have to screen all public-funded projects with a budgetary outlay of more than Rs 500 crore. This is to ensure that such projects have components of logistics and infrastructure connectivity, before they get a nod from the Union Cabinet.

As a result, all public-funded projects will have to be examined by an inter-ministerial body — Network Planning Group —under the PM GatiShakti. It is to see if all government departments have been coordinating with each other at the conceptualisation stage of a project.