The Centre is planning to expand the scope of the Gati Shakti initiative to bring the social sector within its ambit and has identified five departments for integration, which includes health, education, rural development & Panchayati Raj, urban development and women & child development, per senior government officials. 

“The initiative is doing good for infrastructure development projects...We have recently started engaging with the social sector departments to see how we can utilise (the platform) to improve functioning in these sectors. We have started expanding our horizon to the social sector also,” Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) Secretary Anurag Jain said at an interaction with the media on Friday.

The Culture Ministry too could be integrated in the initiative and benefit from it, he added.

Jain also said that projects related to 28 states to the tune of ₹5,000 crore under the ‘Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment’ scheme have been approved.

Holistic planning

On October 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Gati Shakti — National Master Plan for effective and integrated infrastructure development in the country that would also reduce logistics costs. The idea behind the initiative is to break departmental silos and institutionalise holistic planning for stakeholders across major infrastructure projects, according to the government.

All logistics and connectivity infrastructure projects, entailing investment of over ₹500 crore, are routed through the Network Planning Group (NPG), constituted under the PM Gati Shakti initiative.

Over 1,994 layers of data, including that of land, ports, forests and highways, are available on the portal.

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