Road ministry completes 141,190 km of national highways as of March 31

The road transport ministry has completed 1,41,190 kilometre of national highways as on March 31 this year out of the set target of 2 lakh km for 2024-25, the commerce and industry ministry said on Thursday.

Similarly, the petroleum ministry has completed laying of a gas pipeline of 20,000 km out of 34,500 km targeted for the same period and the power ministry has also surpassed its target for laying the transmission network of 4,54,200 km till the end of March 2022.

Ministry-wise progress of such projects was discussed during a review meeting on PM GatiShakti on April 13. It was chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.

The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (NMP) is an integrated plan depicting all the existing and proposed development initiatives of various ministries/departments for better synergy.

"During a presentation made by the Special Secretary, Logistics Division, DPIIT (department for promotion of industry and internal trade), the ministry-wise progress on the targets set under the PM GatiShakti were discussed. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has completed 1,41,190 km of National Highways as on 31st March 2022 out of the set target of 2,00,000 km for 2024-25," it said.

The Department of Telecommunication has created the OFC (Optical Fibre Cable)network of 33,00,997 km as on March 31, 2022 against the set target of 50,00,000 km for 2024-25.

It added that an integrated Multimodal Network Planning Group (NPG) has been operationalized with representation from various connectivity infrastructure ministries/departments involving their heads of network planning division for unified planning and integration of the proposals and assisting the Empowered Group of Secretaries.

"States have been onboarded and institutional set-up has been constituted in states as well to streamline and demonstrate the concept of PM GatiShakti," the ministry said.

The Empowered Group of Secretaries has been constituted in 25 states, the NPG is functional in nine states and the Technical Support Unit has been set up in six states.

"The benefits and on-ground impact of the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan portal were also illustrated. Various ministries/departments and state governments have started using this portal for integration and synchronization of implementation efforts, optimization of cost and time at the stage of planning of infrastructure projects," it added.

The meeting was attended by Railway Board Chairman V K Tripathi; Secretary in the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sanjeev Ranjan; Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Bansal; DPIIT Secretary Anurag Jain and senior officials from all other infrastructure ministries.