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To fast-track project approvals and cut down corruption and red-tape, the Government is working on making all clearances required for infrastructure and industrial projects available online by the end of the fiscal.
The online drive, led by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion and the Prime Minister’s Project Monitoring Group, has identified a total of 59 clearances so far that are required across sectors for various projects.
“For each of the identified clearances, we will first work out the process flow, then digitise it and finally integrate it with the e-Biz platform launched by the DIPP,” Anil Swarup from the Prime Minister’s Project Monitoring Group (PMG), told BusinessLine . Infosys is the Government’s partner in providing the relevant software for the initiative, he added.
The idea is to make the e-Biz platform the front-end for all approvals required, both at the Central and State levels. An investor would only need to log into the e-Biz site which will in turn connect it to the relevant departments for the required clearances.
“The e-Biz platform will become a one-stop shop for all clearances. It will also be easy for the Centre to monitor exactly where clearances are stuck so that action can be taken to expedite them,” an official from the DIPP said.
The Government has set a deadline of March 31, 2015, for completion of the entire digitisation and integration process. At present, different Ministries and departments are at various levels of preparedness for integrating into the online platform. The Forest Ministry, for instance, has already started giving clearances online to projects. The Environment Ministry is scheduled to do it from September 1. The Ministries of Coal, Shipping and Petroleum are also at an advanced level of preparedness.
“We are helping other Ministries and Departments to identify the number of clearances that are given by them, so that the process flow can be designed and digitised,” the official said.
The DIPP’s e-Biz platform would also act as the Central platform for state-level clearances. “As many as 35 required clearances of the total of 59 identified so far are at the State level. The Centre is working together with States to help streamline the clearances,” Swarup said.
A lot of digitisation work has already happened in States like Gujarat, Punjab and Karnataka and it would not be difficult to get them integrated with the Central platform, he added.
The PMG was set up last year to facilitate implementation of stuck infrastructure projects worth an estimated ₹1,000 crore that have not been moving because of unresolved issues with different Ministries and Departments both at the Central and State levels.
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