PMG facilitates clearance of 155 projects worth Rs 5.5 lakh cr

The Prime Minister's Project Monitoring Group has facilitated clearances of 155 projects, which entail an investment of around Rs 5.5 lakh crore.
"The group has so far managed to facilitate clearances of 155 projects entailing an investment of Rs 5.5 lakh crore," Project Monitoring Group (PMG) Chairman Anil Swarup said today.
Speaking at PHD Chamber Summit on Highways, he said steps were on to digitise all the process by March, 2015 as the government wants transparency in the processes.
"We are trying to digitise all the processes. Industry can file applications in digitise version for forest clearances. The vision is that starting with forest today, environment and mines clearance can also be digitally tracked by September 1 and November 1 respectively and hopefully by the last quarter of the financial year coal related digital clearance," he said.

He said that the PMG has 12 sub-groups and three of these hold meetings every week to fast track projects.
"Encouraged by what this group has been doing, the state governments have approached us and we are now helping state governments to set up their own website portals for fast track clearance of projects. These portals are getting back-end support from Centre," he said.

So far 10 states in the past one month have launched their own portals and the remaining states are likely to set up portals in a couple of months, he added.
"What this will do is to provide a transparent mechanism of resolving issues. What we are aiming at is what I call one real window through which the industry could go to the web and file its application and then track the application," he added.

PMG has identified about 450 stalled projects worth over Rs 20 lakh crore, pending for years.
The PMG was set up in June last year to facilitate and fast-track projects by resolving specific issues.