66 major projects worth Rs 5 trillion recommended under PM GatiShakti

An inter-ministerial panel led by the industry department over the past eight months has assessed 66 major projects having a price tag of more than Rs 5 billion. According to Sumita Dawra, Special Secretary for the industries department, the overall cost of these projects will be Rs 5 trillion. These initiatives include the Marwar Industrial Cluster (Rs 9.22 billion), the Barbil-Nayagarh-Barsun new railway line (Rs 88.40 billion), and the Gurdaspur-Jammu-Srinagar natural gas pipeline (Rs 69.31 billion), among others. All of these initiatives have received funding and approval from their respective governments.

The PM GatiShakti national masterplan portal, according to Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal, will aid in the planning of social infrastructure, such as schools, nursing homes, and hospitals, in addition to its primary goal of filling critical infrastructure gaps across the nation. There are currently almost 1,300 layers of data, including rivers, forests, wildlife sanctuaries, and Unesco world heritage sites.

According to Goyal, 12 states have so far digitised their land records on the portal. He further stated, “Data layers of GatiShakti engage with each other through APIs, and if an alignment of a particular project was put into GatiShakti, it would highlight the challenges of implementation and help re- align the project, saving time and cost.”