Union Minister Piyush Goyal launches District Master Plan under PM GatiShakti for 27 aspirational districts

Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal today launched the district version of PM GatiShakti National Master Plan for 27 aspirational districts in the country on the occasion of completion of 3 years of PM GatiShakti. Speaking on the occasion, Shri Goyal said that Gatishakti is a Super Intellegent tool for infrastructure planning and that the District Master Plan will be expanded to cover more than 750 districts across the country in the next 18 months. Shri Goyal also launched the ‘Guidelines for Preparing City Logistics Plans for Indian Cities’ to help cities tailor their logistics planning to meet its unique vision, objectives, and local characteristics.

In his address, Shri Goyal said that the National Master Plan is a faster, better, efficient, more cost effective and high quality tool for India to foray into world class infrastructure. He said that speed and strength today are the defining feature of India as the country is recognised worldwide for modern high quality infrastructure delivered on time, planned for future and implemented with efficiency. He said that the tool will be utilised by the world for their infrastructure planning in the future.

The Minister emphasised that adoption of geospatial and other cutting-edge technologies in the PM GatiShakti Master Plan marks a significant stride towards revolutionising connectivity landscape. Every data in PM GatiShakti is validated, double-checked and a mechanism has been introduced for periodic updation of the data, he said. Applauding the BISAG-N team for developing the master tool, Shri Goyal called PM GatiShakti a superior intelligence and stressed that the GIS enabled platform will help save significant budget for the government and plan to build infrastructure with more efficiency due to its data backed decision making process.

Shri Goyal added that PM GatiShakti has become the fulcrum around which infrastructure outreach programmes are going from strength to strength. He emphasised that PM GatiShakti has been instrumental in enabling a multiplier effect on the economy and helping India become one of the largest fast growing economies. Shri Goyal noting Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision in seeding the idea of spatial technologies 20 years ago, added that the interplay between geo and spatial was recognised by PM Modi and translated into reality in Gujarat.

The Minister further stated that PM Modi has expanded the ambit of PM GatiShakti to social infrastructure to map power distribution lines, schools, hospitals and others using the ‘Area Development Approach’ initiative. While we are planning for outcomes for physical infrastructure, can we also plan for social infrastructure, for ease of living. PM GatiShakti is progressing now to merge ease of doing business and ease of living because they are synonymous to each other, he said.

DPIIT had organized a full day meeting today of stakeholders of Gatishakti platform from Central and State Governments to review the performance of the platform and to brainstorm on ways to make it even more useful for central and state level infrastructure planners.