The PM Gati Shakti - National Master Plan (NMP) has completed an evaluation of 76 central government key infrastructure projects related to railways, roads, and transport, etc. worth Rs 5.14 lakh crore over the past year, leading to cost savings, providing the shortest connectivity, and minimising intersections with forest cover. PM Gati Shakti - National Mission Plan, which will be unveiled on October 13, 2021, is a geographic information system-enabled platform that would consolidate data on infrastructure such as highways, railway lines, ports, inland waterways, telecom lines, and electricity lines into a single portal. The NMP platform offers integrated multimodal logistics planning and data-driven decision-making. “We held four meetings to identify the pain points. The fifth meeting on port-related connectivity issues will be held with chairmen of all ports soon,” Sumita Dawra, Special Secretary at Commerce Ministry said in a media briefing. “So far 22 states have integrated their land records with Gati Shakti - NMP. Also, 14 social sectors ministries/departments have been boarded onto the NMP platform and are in advanced stages of integration to utilise the PM Gatishakti mechanism,” she said. Using the NMP, concerned ministries in collaboration with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) identified 156 infrastructure gaps relating to first and last-mile connectivity issues in major sectors of the economy such as coal, steel, fertiliser, ports, food, and public distribution. The Union Budget 2023 allotted Rs 75,000 crore (including Rs 15,000 crore from private sources) for 100 important transport infrastructure projects designated for first and last-mile connectivity. The Telecom Ministry is adopting the Gatishakti NMP for the full 5G rollout. “The availability of existing telecom infrastructure across states among other data layers has helped in expeditious planning of the 5G network. This will enable faster rollout of the network and early availability of 5G services,” Dawra said. Because of better planning based on data layers made possible by the usage of NMP, costs have been reduced for every project. On the Gatishakti NMP, a mobile application called call before u dig has been developed with the goal of preventing damage to underlying assets like optical fiber cables, which results in a loss of roughly Rs 3,000 crore annually. The cost of constructing the Silchar-Jiribam-Imphal natural gas pipeline in Assam and Manipur was reduced from Rs. 1,150 crore to Rs. 1,100 crore thanks to the use of the NMP and a shorter overall length. The Haldia border project between India and Nepal, administered by the Gatishakti NMP, has reduced junctions with the forest area and the Raniganj coal mine area. Gatishakti's building of a broad gauge double line between Sawai Madhopur and Jaipur has resulted in overall freight train savings of Rs. 1,104.93 lakh. 33 systems from seven ministries have been integrated with the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), which was introduced as part of the national logistics policy. All cargo containers that are exported or imported through domestic or foreign waters can be tracked thanks to ULIP. “So far 76 companies have already signed non-disclosure agreements with ULIP for getting access to data sets. Fifteen more companies are likely to join soon. To date, 57 million cargo containers have been tracked in the last six years. Major industry players like Maruti Suzuki, DHL, UltraTech, TCIL, Tata Steel and Bosch have been onboarded on ULIP,” Abishek Chaudhary, Vice-President of National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation said. See also: PM Gati Shakti identifies 101 projects under ports and shipping Critical port linking projects to get Rs 1 trillion Gati Shakti push