Eastern Zone Conference based on PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan for Multi Modal Connectivity was organised on Friday at Mahendraghat Rail Complex, Patna.
This conference was jointly organized by the Ministry of Railways and the Government of Bihar. Apart from Bihar, representatives of Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states and representatives of Eastern Railway/Kolkata, South Eastern Railway/Kolkata, South East Central Railway/Bilaspur and East Coast Railway/Bhubaneswar joined the conference through video conferencing. Apart from this, representatives of various ministries of the Government of India also participated in this conference online.
On this occasion, Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Tarkishore Prasad and Deputy Chief Minister Renu Devi joined the officers of Railway Board through video conferencing, while Nitin Naveen, Road Construction Minister/Bihar, General Manager of East Central Railway Anupam Sharma heads of the departments were present in the conference.
The conference was inaugurated by lighting of the lamp by Nitin Naveen, Road Construction Minister, Government of Bihar. General Manager Anupam Sharma welcomed the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar and other dignitaries present at the conference venue through video link. In his welcome address, he said that it is a matter of pleasure that ECR has got the good fortune of organising this conference in Patna under PM Gati Shakti Yojana.
He said that the Indian Railways and its unit - East Central Railway are fully committed for the multidimensional nature of the country's infrastructure and their integrated, speedy and uninterrupted development. Today's conference is a powerful and meaningful step for the overall development of the eastern region, he said.
The issue of multi modal connectivity of infrastructure like railways, roads, waterways etc was discussed in this conference.
In the conference through online mode, senior officers of the states of Bihar, Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, various Zonal Railways etc discussed in detail the ongoing projects in the respective states, ministries and departments and for the integrated implementation of the upcoming projects. The PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan has been prepared by Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Application and Geoinformatics (BISAG-N) in a dynamic Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, in which data on specific action plans of Ministries/Departments are stored in a comprehensive database.
To facilitate the process, a capacity building exercise is being conducted by the BISAG-N team with senior level officials of Ministries and Departments of the Government of India with an aim to integrate data on their existing/planned projects on a single platform.
It may be noted that ‘Gati Shakti National Master Plan’ for multi-modal connectivity has been launched by rime Minister Narendra Modi with the mission of promoting the development of infrastructure and to give further impetus to the progress of the country. The objective of the scheme is to promote integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.
The people of India, industry of India, the business world of India, etc are at centre of this great campaign of dynamism. It will give new energy for building 21st century India by eliminating all the obstacles in the way. The PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan will play the role of a guiding force in the government policies related to infrastructure development and to speed up the planning and ensure that the projects are completed within the stipulated time frame. The relevance of this scheme will be proved by the active participation of the states.