look news india
The Government of India has taken a very historic and big step towards successfully realizing the country’s visionary ‘Vision 2047’. With the objective of strengthening multi-dimensional connectivity in the country, significantly improving the efficiency of infrastructure, significantly reducing logistics costs and further enhancing India’s logistics competitiveness at the global level, the Union Cabinet has given its official approval for the formation of a separate integrated authority.
The establishment of ‘Integrated Transport and Logistics Authority’ (ITLA) has been given the green signal in the Union Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This new authority will work administratively under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. This step of the government has been taken to bring revolutionary changes in the transport sector of the country.
According to the official information given by the government, the main objective of creating this new authority is to solve on a single platform the schemes scattered among various ministries and government agencies related to transport and the major administrative challenges faced in their implementation.
This national apex body will act as the country’s apex body for integrated transport and logistics planning, research, technical appraisal of projects, their continuous monitoring, policy support and accurate data analysis. This institution will prepare a strong ‘National Transport Master Plan’ keeping in mind the comprehensive planning period of at least ten years or more, which will completely cover roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and modern logistics system.
The new integrated authority (ITLA) will conduct an in-depth assessment of the short-term regional plans (about five years) and annual plans of various transport ministries to ensure that all actions are moving in the right direction of the National Transport Master Plan.
Apart from this, this institution will also carry out technical appraisal of major infrastructure projects of the Government of India costing Rs 500 crore or more, while the financial appraisal of these projects will continue to be done through the existing financial mechanism. This authority will closely monitor the implementation of these mega projects, provide a coordinated mechanism to address problems arising at the ground level and also assess the actual impact of the projects after their completion.
To make this system completely digital and transparent, ITLA will draw data related to transport and logistics from various important sources like GSTN e-way bill, Fastag, vehicle portal, GPS-based systems, urban traffic management systems and other relevant databases. Through all these sources, a huge and integrated ‘National Transport Data Repository’ will be created, with the help of which it will be much easier to plan and monitor future policies.