PM Gati Shakti Master Plan: Cabinet Secretary Led EGoS To Study Multimodal Connectivity To All Economic Zones To Identify Gaps

The first meeting of the Empowered Group of Secrtaries (EGoS) to monitor the implementation of the Modi government's ambitious PM Gati Shakti plan was held on Friday (17 December).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in October this year launched PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan for providing multimodal connectivity to various economic zones in the country.

The government had constituted the cabinet secretary led EGoS with Secretaries of 20 Infrastructure and Economic User Ministries as members to monitor implementation of PM Gati Shakti.

In the first meeting, the EGoS reveiwed the progress made so far, the Commerce Ministry said in a release on Saturday (18 December).

According to the ministry, the EGoS made several important decisions in the meeting.

"It has been decided to compile the infrastructural gaps as felt by various Economic Ministries. This is to be forwarded to the concerned Infrastructure Ministry for appropriate consideration to include in the annual action plan for next financial year," the ministry said.

Further, decision was made to study the multimodal connectivity to all the economic zones in the country on priority so that gaps are identified. Any such system or process, which is causing enhanced logistics cost are to be identified and deliberated upon and measures are to be taken including necessary administrative decisions so as to reduce cost, the ministry said.

EGoS has also emphasised that all the ministries should include in their planning logistics cost reduction at the core so as to achieve the objective of PM Gati Shakti.

Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geoinformatics (BISAG-N), which has developed the National Master Plan, informed the EGoS that over 300 layers of data has been mapped on to GIS based national master plan.

It was further informed that all the central ministries and most of the state governments have started updation of their required layers.

Commerce Ministry's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), which is the nodal department for PM Gati Shatki, informed about the administrative arrangements made for monitoring and coordination of PM Gati Shakti.

The ministry further said that Network Planning Group (NPG) comprising representatives from seven central ministries has already been constituted.

High Powered Expert Group of Professionals is being constituted to support the NPG, it added.