PM GatiShakti National Master Plan Completes 5 Years: GIS Integration, Logistics Gains and the ITLA Phase

The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan completed five years on 13 October 2026, having grown from a national infrastructure mapping exercise into a full geospatial planning ecosystem. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched it on 13 October 2021 to connect 58 Central Ministries and all 36 States and Union Territories on a single GIS-based map. Its Network Planning Group has since evaluated more than 400 infrastructure projects worth about ₹20.23 lakh crore, making the platform central to India’s effort to cut logistics costs and build seamless multimodal connectivity.

What Is the PM GatiShakti National Master Plan?

The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan is a GIS-based digital platform that brings infrastructure data from Central Ministries, States and Union Territories onto one map. Planners use it to align roads, railways, ports, waterways, airports, mass transit and logistics projects before public money is committed.

The idea behind the plan is simple. Earlier, each ministry and state planned its own projects in isolation. A highway could be built without checking whether a rail line, a power corridor or a water pipeline was coming through the same stretch. That produced duplicated work, repeated digging, delayed clearances and higher costs. PM GatiShakti tries to solve this by placing every relevant layer of data on a common digital map, so planners can see the full picture at the planning stage itself.

The platform was built in-house under the Atmanirbhar Bharat push by the Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N), an autonomous institute under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It runs on MeghRaj, the Government of India’s cloud infrastructure, and uses satellite imagery from ISRO along with base maps from the Survey of India.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved the implementation framework of the plan on 21 October 2021, shortly after the Prime Minister’s launch. The Logistics Division of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry serves as its secretariat. DPIIT itself was carved out of the erstwhile Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion in January 2019.

The Seven Engines of Multimodal Connectivity

PM GatiShakti is driven by seven infrastructure engines that are meant to move forward together rather than in separate silos.

These seven engines are supported by energy transmission, IT and communication networks, bulk water and sewerage systems, and social infrastructure. The plan also aligns the projects listed under the National Infrastructure Pipeline with this common framework, so that the pipeline and the master plan do not pull in different directions.

Six Principles That Guide Project Planning

Every proposal placed before the Network Planning Group is tested against six principles. These are integrated development, multimodal infrastructure, last-mile connectivity, expedited land acquisition, minimised clearances and reduced ecological impact.

In practice, a project is judged on its own cost and benefit and on whether it connects to existing networks, serves the last mile, avoids unnecessary forest or wildlife disruption, and can be cleared without years of inter-departmental friction. This evaluation filter is what separates PM GatiShakti from a simple mapping portal.

How the PM GatiShakti Portal Integrates Infrastructure Data

The PM GatiShakti portal is a map-based dashboard where ministries, states and districts upload infrastructure, land, forest and demographic data as separate layers. Users can overlay these layers to test alignments, check clearances and spot gaps before a project is approved.

Data is the core of the system. In 2023, the master plan carried 1,463 data layers, made up of 585 Central Ministry layers and 878 State and Union Territory layers. By 2026, official figures described more than 1,800 data layers on the master plan, while the platform’s total layer count was put at more than 23,493 as of 12 October 2026.

Along with the layers, the platform hosts more than 65 software modules and tools and over 100 mobile and web applications. These tools allow a planner to measure the distance between a proposed factory and the nearest railway line, identify Go and No-Go areas on environmental grounds, check forest and wildlife boundaries, and seek no-objection certificates from multiple departments without physically moving files between offices.

A major shift came in September 2025, when the government launched the PM GatiShakti Public platform through the Unified Geospatial Interface (UGI). It opened 230 approved datasets to private companies and the general public for site suitability studies, connectivity mapping, alignment planning and compliance checks. Before this, most of the data was restricted to government users.

The Knowledge Management System (KMS), the Decentralized Data Uploading and Management System (DUMS) and the PMGS-NMP Dashboard were also added in 2025. DUMS follows a three-stage workflow: a designated manager uploads the data, a nodal officer reviews it, and BISAG-N publishes it. This reduces the risk of outdated or unverified information entering the planning system.

What Is the Gati Shakti Sanchar Portal Used For?

The Gati Shakti Sanchar portal is a centralised Right of Way clearance system for telecom infrastructure. Companies use it to apply online for permission to lay optical fibre cable and install mobile towers, while states and districts track and dispose of these applications within fixed timelines.

The Ministry of Communications launched the portal on 14 May 2022. It was designed under the National Broadband Mission to end the practice of firms approaching each local authority separately for road-cutting and tower permissions. Faster clearances support optical fibre expansion and denser tower networks, both of which are needed for reliable 4G and 5G services.

Which Ministry Runs PM GatiShakti?

The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan is run by the Logistics Division of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. DPIIT provides the secretariat and technical support, while BISAG-N develops and maintains the digital platform.

The Logistics Division was created in July 2017 through an amendment to the Second Schedule of the Government of India (Allocation of Business) Rules, 1961. It was placed under DPIIT in December 2021, specifically to drive PM GatiShakti and the National Logistics Policy together. This arrangement gives one division the mandate to coordinate infrastructure planning and logistics reform at the same time.

The Three-Tier Institutional Framework

The CCEA approved a three-tier structure to run the plan. At the top is the Empowered Group of Secretaries (EGoS), chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. It includes Secretaries of 18 ministries, with the Head of the Logistics Division as Member Convenor. The EGoS oversees implementation and approves changes to the master plan.

The second tier is the Network Planning Group (NPG). It brings together the heads of the Network Planning Divisions of the infrastructure ministries. The NPG examines project proposals, checks whether they meet PM GatiShakti principles, and pushes for unified planning, integration and optimisation. As of 11 August 2026, it had evaluated 396 projects worth about ₹18.66 lakh crore, and by October 2026 the count had crossed 400 projects worth ₹20.23 lakh crore.

The third tier is the Technical Support Unit (TSU), made up of domain experts in areas such as transport planning, structures, power, pipelines, GIS, information and communication technology, finance, public-private partnerships and data analytics. The TSU assists the Logistics Division in its secretariat role.

States and Union Territories mirror this structure through State Monitoring Committees and State Master Plans. This is why the plan is described as an exercise in cooperative federalism and not just a Central government programme.

Five Years of PM GatiShakti: Key Milestones

The plan has moved through distinct phases since 2021, starting with a small set of infrastructure ministries and ending with a platform that covers social sectors and districts.

The numbers tell the story of expansion. In 2023-24, the platform carried 1,463 layers. By October 2026, it had more than 1,800 data layers on the master plan and 23,493 data layers across the wider platform. The user base widened from eight infrastructure ministries to 58 Central Ministries and Departments, including social-sector ministries such as Health, Education and Women and Child Development.

The evaluation workload also grew sharply. Only 71 projects were assessed in 2022-23, while 352 were evaluated by February 2026. The cumulative value of projects examined by the NPG crossed ₹20 lakh crore in 2026, which shows that the platform is now part of the routine approval chain for large infrastructure proposals rather than a pilot experiment.

One point needs care. The NPG evaluates projects, but it does not sanction money. Financial approval still runs through the existing appraisal systems of the Ministry of Finance and the line ministries. PM GatiShakti adds a technical and integration filter before a project reaches those stages.

PM GatiShakti vs National Logistics Policy vs National Infrastructure Pipeline

PM GatiShakti is a GIS-based planning platform, the National Logistics Policy is a policy framework to cut logistics costs, and the National Infrastructure Pipeline is a list of planned infrastructure projects. They work together: the pipeline supplies projects, GatiShakti plans them, and the logistics policy improves the systems around them.

The National Infrastructure Pipeline was launched in December 2019 with 6,835 projects and a projected capital expenditure of about ₹102 lakh crore for 2020 to 2025. The final task force report raised this to ₹111 lakh crore. Its purpose is to prepare a shelf of investable projects and attract private capital.

The National Logistics Policy, launched on 17 September 2022, works on the softer side of the problem: processes, documentation, digital systems and skills. Its three stated targets are to bring logistics costs in line with global benchmarks by 2030, to place India among the top 25 countries in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index by 2030, and to build a data-driven decision support system.

The link between the three is practical. A highway or port project listed in the NIP is tested on the GatiShakti platform for alignment and connectivity. Once built, its performance feeds into the logistics system that the National Logistics Policy is trying to improve. None of the three can deliver results alone.

How ULIP Connects the Logistics System

The Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) is the digital backbone of the National Logistics Policy. It connects the separate digital systems of different ministries and agencies so that a user can access transport and logistics data through one interface.

By July 2026, ULIP had connected 46 logistics systems across 12 Central Ministries using 142 APIs. Earlier official figures put the number of digital transactions on the platform at more than 160 crore by August 2025. ULIP is often described as the logistics equivalent of the Unified Payments Interface, because it does for freight data what UPI did for bank payments.

Impact on Logistics Costs and India’s Global Ranking

India’s logistics cost was estimated at 7.97% of GDP in 2023-24 in a study by DPIIT and the National Council of Applied Economic Research, far below the 13 to 14% figure quoted for years. India also ranked 38th among 139 countries in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index 2023.

The logistics cost study, released in September 2025, was the first official attempt to measure the number scientifically. It used a hybrid method combining a survey of more than 3,500 industry stakeholders with data from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the RBI and the GST Network. In absolute terms, the cost was estimated at ₹24.01 lakh crore, or 9.09% of non-services output.

The older 13 to 14% figure came from external studies and partial datasets. The new estimate reflects a change in measurement rather than a sudden fall in costs, and the earlier number was never a proper national estimate. Even so, India’s logistics cost remains above the 6 to 8% range seen in several developed economies, which is why the 2030 target matters.

On the World Bank index, India moved from 54th in 2014 to 44th in 2018 and then to 38th in 2023. The government’s stated aim is to reach the top 25 by 2030. The index measures customs efficiency, infrastructure quality, ease of arranging shipments, logistics competence, tracking and timeliness, so it captures both hardware and procedural reform.

It is difficult to isolate how much of this improvement is due to PM GatiShakti alone. Highway construction, dedicated freight corridors, port modernisation, GST and ULIP all contributed. Still, the platform’s role in aligning these projects and reducing duplicated work is the reason the government treats it as a core reform rather than a data project.

What Are Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals?

Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals are privately developed rail-linked freight terminals set up under an Indian Railways policy. They let industry load and unload bulk goods close to production centres, cutting first-mile and last-mile costs and shifting freight from road to rail.

As of July 2026, 142 Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals were operational with a combined capacity of 224 million tonnes per annum. They had attracted about ₹10,000 crore in private investment, handled 146 million tonnes of freight in 2025-26, and another 310 locations had in-principle approval. The terminals serve cement, steel, foodgrain, fertiliser, coal, fly ash, containers, automobiles and agricultural produce.

District Master Plans and the Social Sector Push

District Master Plans are local versions of the PM GatiShakti platform that help district officials plan schools, health centres, anganwadis, roads and water pipelines together. The first plans were launched in October 2024 for aspirational districts, and the model is now being extended to all 112 aspirational districts.

The district-level expansion matters because most social infrastructure is planned close to the ground. A district administration can now overlay population data, existing schools, health facilities, road networks and water sources, and then decide where a new anganwadi or sub-centre is actually needed. This is what the government calls the Area Development Approach.

Five sector-specific tools were built for schools, health centres, anganwadis, roads and water pipelines. District teams were trained at BISAG-N in Gandhinagar in December 2024, followed by regional workshops and online sessions. Early use cases include widening the Damoh to Jabalpur road from two lanes to four, selecting a solar park site in Damoh, planning drinking water under the Jal Jeevan Mission, electrifying unelectrified villages, and preparing a watershed management plan in Baran district.

The government has said it intends to take the district model to more than 750 districts. That is a large jump from 112 aspirational districts, and it will test whether the platform can work in districts that lack trained staff or reliable digital data.

The social-sector push also changed the nature of the platform. PM GatiShakti was originally built for roads, rail, ports and power. It now includes schools, hospitals and anganwadis, which means the same map is being used to plan economic corridors and village-level public services.

The Next Phase: Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority

The Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority is a Special Purpose Vehicle approved by the Union Cabinet on 6 October 2026 to plan and appraise transport projects across modes. It will prepare a National Transport Master Plan with a planning horizon of ten years or more.

The Cabinet approval directly addresses a long-standing problem: roads, railways, ports, aviation and urban transport have historically been planned by separate ministries and agencies, often with little coordination. The ITLA is meant to sit above these silos as the apex institution for integrated transport and logistics planning, research, project appraisal, monitoring and data analytics.

Its mandate is wide. The National Transport Master Plan will cover roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics. The ITLA will also evaluate the five-year sectoral plans and annual plans of transport ministries to check whether they align with the master plan.

For individual projects, the authority will carry out the technical appraisal of government infrastructure projects costing ₹500 crore or more. Financial appraisal will continue through the existing mechanisms. It will monitor implementation, coordinate the resolution of inter-ministerial issues, and conduct post-completion impact assessments.

A key new institution under the ITLA is the National Transport Data Repository (NTDR). It will pull together datasets from GST Network e-way bills, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems and urban traffic management systems. The data will support freight flow and origin-destination analytics, which help planners understand where goods actually move rather than where they are assumed to move.

The ITLA will also advise on reviewing and updating the National Logistics Policy, 2022, support capacity building and skilling, and promote research and innovation. The government has cited similar apex transport bodies in South Korea, Japan, the United States, China and Australia as models.

Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya and the Skills Gap

Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV) is a Central University in Vadodara, Gujarat, dedicated to transport and logistics education. It was established through the Central Universities (Amendment) Act, 2022 and is sponsored by the Ministry of Railways.

GSV supports PM GatiShakti and the National Logistics Policy through specialised courses, executive training and research, and serves as a nodal agency for developing and delivering courses on both initiatives. It offers programmes in rail engineering, aviation, maritime studies, intelligent transport systems, logistics and supply chain management and multimodal transportation.

The university addresses a practical constraint. A digital planning platform is only as good as the officials and engineers who use it. Without trained staff in districts and line ministries, even a well-designed GIS system can end up with outdated data and weak analysis. The ITLA and GSV therefore address two different gaps: one institutional, the other human.

Challenges That Remain

The biggest weakness of any GIS platform is the quality of its data. Land records are not uniformly digitised across the country, forest and wildlife boundaries are sometimes outdated, and different departments follow different formats and update cycles. When layers are stale or incomplete, the map can give a confident but wrong answer.

Coordination is another gap. Ministries continue to work in separate silos in practice, even when they share a common platform. A road project and a rail project may both appear on the map, yet their timelines and land requirements can still clash if the teams do not talk to each other. The NPG was created to solve this, but it can only review projects that are sent to it.

Clearances remain slow. Environmental and forest approvals, land acquisition and utility shifting can delay a project for years, no matter how well it was planned. PM GatiShakti can identify a problem early, but it cannot by itself remove a statutory requirement or settle a local dispute.

Financing and skills are the other constraints. Large projects need long-term capital, and private participation is uneven across regions. Many districts and smaller states also lack trained GIS staff, which limits how much they can use the platform. Unless these gaps are closed, the district-level expansion will remain uneven.

There is also a risk of the platform becoming a reporting exercise. If data is uploaded mainly to show compliance rather than to inform decisions, the map will look impressive without changing outcomes. The test for the next five years is whether the platform improves project choices, not whether it holds more layers.

The Way Forward

The immediate priority is to make the Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority operational. The ITLA needs a clear leadership structure, a funded secretariat and a timeline for its first National Transport Master Plan. Once it starts appraising projects above ₹500 crore, the gap between sectoral planning and integrated planning should narrow.

Data quality deserves equal attention. The government has already built a decentralised upload and review system, but it needs to be enforced across all ministries and states. Land records, forest boundaries, utility networks and district-level social infrastructure data must be updated on a fixed cycle. Without this, the platform’s advice will remain only as good as its weakest layer.

Capacity building must accompany both. District officials need training, handholding and technical support, not just a login. The experience of the 112 aspirational districts can be studied and scaled before the model is extended to more than 750 districts.

The larger goal is clear. India wants to bring logistics costs closer to global benchmarks and enter the top 25 of the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index by 2030. The Viksit Bharat 2047 vision also depends on infrastructure that is planned as a network rather than as a set of isolated projects. PM GatiShakti provides the map for that transition. Whether the map turns into faster, cheaper and better-connected infrastructure will depend on the institutions and the people who use it.

Key Takeaways

• The PM GatiShakti National Master Plan was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 13 October 2021, and the CCEA approved its implementation on 21 October 2021.
• The plan connects 58 Central Ministries and Departments and all 36 States and Union Territories on a single GIS-based platform developed by BISAG-N.
• The master plan integrated more than 1,800 data layers, while the wider platform carried over 23,493 data layers as of 12 October 2026, along with more than 65 tools and 100 applications.
• The Network Planning Group had evaluated 421 infrastructure projects worth ₹20.23 lakh crore by October 2026.
• The Logistics Division of DPIIT, under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, serves as the secretariat of PM GatiShakti, with the Cabinet Secretary chairing the Empowered Group of Secretaries.
• The Union Cabinet approved the Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority (ITLA) on 6 October 2026 to prepare a National Transport Master Plan with a horizon of ten years or more.
• India’s logistics cost was estimated at 7.97% of GDP in 2023-24, and India ranked 38th among 139 countries in the World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index 2023.
• The National Logistics Policy, launched on 17 September 2022, aims to place India among the top 25 countries in the Logistics Performance Index by 2030.