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Cabinet approves ITLA to draft a National Transport Master Plan

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The Union Cabinet on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, approved the Integrated Transport & Logistics Authority (ITLA), a new apex body that will draw up a National Transport Master Plan and vet large infrastructure projects that are now planned separately by different ministries and agencies.

What the National Transport Master Plan will cover

The master plan will look ten years or more ahead and cover roads, railways, ports and shipping, civil aviation, inland waterways, coastal shipping, urban mobility and logistics, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said while briefing reporters on the Cabinet decisions in New Delhi. Shorter sectoral plans of about five years, and the yearly plans of the transport ministries, will be checked against it so that new capacity is built for several modes together rather than one mode at a time.

“By fostering greater coordination and multi-modal integration, ITLA is a new institution responsible for prospective planning for infrastructure development in the country,” Vaishnaw said, according to The Economic Times.

Projects above ₹500 crore under review

ITLA will carry out the technical appraisal of Government of India infrastructure projects costing ₹500 crore or more, while financial appraisal will stay with the existing mechanisms, The Hindu reported. After a project is sanctioned, the authority will also monitor transport and infrastructure works above the same threshold, run a coordinated mechanism to clear bottlenecks, and assess the impact of projects once they are complete.

The authority is being set up as a special purpose vehicle under the administrative control of the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT). It is meant to address long-standing problems caused by fragmented planning and implementation across several transport-related ministries.

A national data repository

ITLA will also build a National Transport Data Repository. It will draw on GSTN e-way bills, FASTag, Vahan, GPS-based systems, urban traffic management systems and other databases, and use analytics such as freight-flow and origin-destination studies for planning, monitoring and impact assessment.

The same Cabinet meeting also cleared a ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund, announced in the Budget for 2026-27, to provide long-term equity capital to small and medium enterprises.

Source: The Hindu, The Economic Times

Photo: Teacher1943 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (resized)

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