At a time when the country is witnessing concentrated focus on infrastructure and logistics development, national security concerns are weighing on the mind of the Indian government on granting private sector access to PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan.
At a time when the country is witnessing concentrated focus on infrastructure and logistics development, national security concerns are weighing on the mind of the Indian government on granting private sector access to PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2021 launched Gati Shakti National Master Plan, a common digital geographic information platform, comprising several data layers from the central and state governments, for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure projects to enhance multimodal connectivity.
“There have been couple of concerns around providing access because the NMP or PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan has lots of data, and a lot of it is sensitive data, strategically important data and if it lands up in wrong hands, it can threaten the security of the country itself,” said Dr Surendra Ahirwar, Joint Secretary, (Logistics Division), Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in an interaction with ET Infra.
Since the launch of PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan last year, the government had contemplated on granting access to the private sector, as they are major stakeholders in infrastructure development in the country.
Amrit Lal Meena, who until last month was serving as special secretary in the logistics division at DPIIT had told ET Infra in an interview in August that the government is working on a protocol and facilitation mechanism for private sector participation and access to the National Master Plan.
“If an investor before taking an investment decision is able to visualize the connectivity of a particular geography in terms of transport infrastructure, telecom infrastructure, power, gas infrastructure and so on, then the decision making would be better,” Meena had told ET Infra.
Ahirwar outlined that granting access to the private sector still remains in consideration and ‘all options are open’ but emphasised that there needs to be a mechanism to secure the data first.
“Unless we have a fool proof mechanism to safeguard the data, while providing access to the private sector, I think we would not be in a hurry to do that. So, we shouldn’t be doing something for which we would have to regret later,” said Ahirwar.
When asked if the government is looking at streamlining the data in such a way that government’s concerns are addressed, Ahirwar stated that it will be the government’s endeavour to do the same.
“That is what we will be endeavouring to do once we are at a good level of confidence that yes, it (data) is secured and we can only provide access to private sector, on certain areas where they actually require the data and they cannot kind of look left and right or see something which is not to be seen by them. At present there is no such mechanism in place,” said Ahirwar.
The task for the government to create a fool proof mechanism has also become challenging since the launch of the National Master Plan or digital platform last year, as the number of data layers shared by central government ministries, bodies as well as from the state governments has increased manifold.
As of October, more than 1,900 data layers of concerned central ministries, departments and state governments have been uploaded on the Gati Shakti National Master Plan. PM Gati Shakti along with recently launched National Logistics Policy are focused on infrastructure development on seven key sectors–roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways and logistics.
