Nanded: At a time when the Congress has been preparing to fight the upcoming Gujarat assembly polls, hoping to deny the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party a seventh term, party leader Rahul Gandhi accused the Narendra Modi-led Union government of taking big industrial projects away from Maharashtra to Gujarat.
During his ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ in Maharashtra, Gandhi had on two occasions mentioned how industrial projects were going out of the state.
At a public meeting in Nanded Thursday, he said, “Big projects like Foxconn-Vedanta, Tata Airbus has disappeared from your state just like how Rs 15 lakh that Modi promised has disappeared from your account.”
This was not the first time that Gandhi had brought up the issue of big projects being routed away from Maharashtra.
While addressing a small rally at Kushnoor in Naigaon Wednesday, he said, “The Airbus project took off from Maharashtra to Gujarat in the same way as airline flights take off from the runways.”
Ever since the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, comprising the BJP and Shinde faction of Shiv Sena, came to power in June, at least three major projects have moved from Maharashtra to Gujarat. The Opposition in the state has alleged that the Shinde-led government did not have Maharashtra’s interest in mind.
The upcoming elections in Gujarat are scheduled from 1 to 5 December, while the counting of votes will be on 8 December. The Congress hasn’t been in power in the state since 1995.
Projects that went to Gujarat
The first major project to go to Gujarat from Maharashtra was the Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project. Leaders of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition had blamed the Shinde-Fadnavis government for this and said a proper follow-up was not initiated despite the project being in the final stages of negotiations.
The Rs 22,000 crore Tata-Airbus project to manufacture several C-295 military transport aircraft too went to Gujarat though Maharashtra had shown interest.
In September, CM Shinde’s loyalist, Uday Samant, who is currently the industries minister, had said that the Tata-Airbus aircraft manufacturing project would come up near Nagpur in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.
The Centre had also, in principle, approved Gujarat’s proposal along with two other states to set up a drug manufacturing park.
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