PM Gati Shakti: MoRTH plans to develop 22 greenfield expressways

New Delhi: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has made significant progress under the "PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP)," aimed at improving multi-modal connectivity and last-mile connectivity across the country. 'Gati Shakti' is a digital platform, which will bring 16 Ministries, including railways and roadways together, for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects for industrial clusters and economic nodes.

As part of the PM Gati Shakti NMP, MoRTH plans to develop 22 Greenfield Expressways, 23 other key infrastructure projects and other highway projects and 35 Multi-Modal Logistics Parks (MMLPs), as part of the Bharatmala Pariyojana and other schemes of the Ministry. Some of the major expressways and corridors, which are under construction stage are Delhi – Mumbai Expressway, Ahmedabad — Dholera Expressway, Delhi-Amritsar-Katra Expressway, Bengaluru-Chennai Expressway, Ambala-Kotputli Expressway, Amritsar-Bhatinda-Jamnagar Expressway, Raipur-VZG Expressway, Hyderabad-VZG Expressway, UER-II, Chennai-Salem Expressway and Chittor-Thatchur Expressway.

Some of the major key infrastructure projects, which are under construction stage include construction of Zojila Tunnel (Ladakh), roads to connect Krishnapatnam Port (Andhra Pradesh), a major bridge over Middle Strait Creek (Andaman & Nicobar Islands), 2-laning of Lalpul-Manmao changing road (Arunachal Pradesh), 6-lane bridge over Ganga bridge at Phaphamau (UP) and 4-lane bridge over the Brahmaputra between Dhubri-Phulbari (Meghalaya).

The Ministry, through its implementing agencies NHAI, NHLML and NHIDCL, has kept pace with the work of implementing the 35 MMLP projects identified for development under the Bharatmala Pariyojana Phase-I. The MMLP at Jogighopa, Assam, which is being developed in partnership with the Assam Government as an equity stakeholder in the project SPV, is already under construction. Besides, bids for three MMLPs have been invited: They are 1. MMLP Nagpur: It is being developed in partnership with JNPT at Sindi Village 2. MMLP Chennai: It is being developed at Mappedu in partnership with Chennai Port Trust and Tamil Nadu Government through its Industrial body SIPCOT 3. MMLP Bengaluru: It is being developed in partnership with the government of Karnataka, through its infrastructure body KIADB (Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board).

In order to make the people aware of the progress made with regard to projects under "PM Gati Shakti", the Ministry ran a special campaign on social media in the last two weeks. Under this campaign, the Ministry apprised the people of the current status of the projects like greenfield expressways and corridors, multi-modal logistics parks (MMLPs), ropeways and other key infrastructure projects on different social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Koo.

"The ambitious programme, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on October 13, 2021, is intended to break departmental silos and bring in more holistic and integrated planning and execution of projects, which will help in bringing down the logistics cost and translate into enormous economic gains to consumers, farmers, youth as well as those engaged in businesses", the Ministry said in an official statement on Tuesday.

"On October 21, 2021, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the proposal for the development of 'PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan (NMP)' for providing multi-modal connectivity to various economic zones. The Ministry is taking steps to further intensify the efforts to realize the vision of the Prime Minister of providing seamless connectivity across India so that it becomes $5 trillion economy by 2025," the statement added.

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