New Delhi, Aug 4 (PTI) As many as 16 social sector ministries, including Health and Panchayati Raj, have integrated their data on the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan (PMGS-NMP) platform so far, the commerce and industry ministry said on Friday.

The platform was launched in 2021 to develop an integrated infrastructure to reduce logistic costs. The plan is to create a technology-based tool for effective and integrated infrastructure development in the country.

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

"As of date, sixteen social sector ministries/ departments have been fully onboarded onto PMGS-NMP, with individual portals developed and integrated with the NMP," the ministry said.

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These ministries include rural development, health, post, higher education, culture, housing and urban affairs, women and child development, tribal affairs, and sports.

"As a way ahead, action points were emphasized for necessary action by social sector ministries for wider adoption of the NMP in social sector planning," it said.

The action points include integration of essential data layers with the NMP to be completed in mission mode; list of schemes/ programs to be identified that can be integrated with PMGS; and promote wider adoption of PMGS in social sector planning for last and first mile delivery and improved access to services, duly involving field level functionaries.

It added that so far 87 data layers related to infrastructure assets, such as primary health centres, dump sites, primary and secondary schools, colleges, district hospitals, public toilets, fair and dairy locations have been mapped on the NMP.

These all issues were discussed in a review meeting of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) on August 1 here.

More than 50 officers from 22 social sector ministries participated in the meeting.

DPIIT Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh highlighted the immense utility of the platform in social sector planning and the need for efforts to be made at district level for the benefits to percolate at grassroot level.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)