New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech Saturday announced a National Geospatial Mission that would boost foundational geospatial infrastructure data and modernise land records.
Sitharaman said using the PM Gati Shakti, this mission would facilitate the modernisation of land records, urban planning, and design of infrastructure projects. A sum of Rs 100 crore has been set aside to implement this mission.
The initiative would improve infrastructure management and mapping and will be particularly beneficial for urban development and land record monitoring.
Sitharaman emphasised that this mission was in line with the BJP government’s vision to improve governance and service delivery through technology.
The National Geospatial Mission is set to give a push to the work that is already being done by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Space to map Indian cities and digitise government records.
The Centre introduced the National Geospatial Policy in 2022, which aimed to substantially expand the access and usage of spatial data, improve citizen services and increase data reach to the country’s remotest corners.
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‘Bold step’
Pawan Goenka, chairperson of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe), said he was delighted to see the National Geospatial Mission in Budget 2025. “It is a bold step towards modernising our infrastructure by leveraging geospatial and space data. I urge private players to harness PM Gati Shakti’s data to drive innovation and smart growth,” he said.
A.K. Bhatt, director general, Indian Space Association (ISpA), said the mission reflected the growing commitment of the government to use downstream capabilities of the space tech sector.
“It is good to see how the industry and the government have realised the importance of these emerging technologies. There is a need to focus on developing downstream capabilities to generate demand and attract investments in upstream activities like satellite development and to launch services in India’s space sector last year,” Bhatt said.
Senior officials from the Department of Science and Technology said the ministry was already working to consolidate the governance framework to liberalise geospatial data access. Not just government agencies, this data would also be available to private players to improve their services.
“Keeping up with the government’s push for Atmanirbhar Bharat, the geospatial mission will empower local companies to generate and utilise their own geospatial data. This will improve global competitiveness and encourage open standards, open data and platforms,” a senior DST official explained.
The officer said under the mission, private companies and government agencies would be able to acquire geospatial data, build applications and develop solutions. The government is already working to promote open standards, data and platforms to assist the mission.
“To strengthen data infrastructure and improve the availability of and access to better location data across organisations and sectors, a pan-India Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) Network has been launched by the Survey of India (SoI),” a DST document on the geospatial policy read.
The document added the national agency Survey of India has already mapped more than 2.8 lakh villages by drone flying under the government’s property survey programme Svamitva Scheme, and have covered the states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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