Maharashtra gets electronics cluster, Opposition says not enough

The state government and the Centre have huddled to silence the Oppositionrsquos criticism over Maharashtra losing big projects Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadanavis on Monday announced the electronics manufacturing cluster EMC project in Ranjangaon near Pune even as the Opposition staged statewide protestsThe Rs 500crore EMC will be setup on 297 acres of land and is expected to be ready in 32 months It will manufacture industrial and consumer electronics solar PV emobility products and allied things The state and the Centre will together build the basic infrastructure The project is expected to lead to an investment of Rs 2000 crore and create 5000 jobs in the coming yearsAlso read Mumbai Traffic cop helps solving case after checking motorcycle number plateldquoThe people Opposition who have opposed a refinery have no moral right to talk about investmentrdquo he said adding that false propaganda was circulated about the VedantaFoxconn project that will be set up in Gujarat ldquoIn fact the then industry minister Subhash Desai said on January 7 2020 that Foxconn will not be investing in Maharashtra No project has gone out from here in the past three months Whatever we lost was during the last governmentrsquos tenure and yet we are being blamed for it A fake narrative is being run here by a section of media and politiciansrdquo he saidHe added that the TataAirbus project was planned in 2021 to be set up in Gujarat ldquoWhen I was the Opposition leader I had met a senior Tata official to convince the company to come to Maharashtra However the official bluntly told me that the atmosphere in the state was not conducive for investmentrdquo ldquoYet I suggested the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation to follow up with Tata When the project went to Gujarat I again contacted the Tata officials who said they had informed the then CM Uddhav Thackeray a year ago that the project would be set up in Gujaratrdquo Fadnavis saidThe deputy CM said the news about Saffron being shifted out of Nagpur was misleading because the factory had already been erected in Hyderabad in 2021 ldquoHow can a project shift to another state in just a weekrsquos time The French ambassador tweeted a photo of the Hyderabad factory on March 2 2021 and on July 7 2022 he posted that the factory had started productionrdquoAccording to Fadnavis projects worth Rs 25000 crore have been approved since his government came to power He asked whether the Maha Vikas Aghadi partners were deliberately spreading false information to prevent investors from coming to Maharashtra ldquoOur government will make Maharashtra a number one state in investment in the next two years The chemical refinery will happen in the staterdquo he added insisting that investment came only when law and order was good ldquoEveryone knows what has happened in the past twoandahalf yearsrdquolsquoExpect bigger investmentrsquoShiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray asked the government to understand the difference between R2000 crore and R150 lakh crore VedantaFoxconn ldquoWe expected a much bigger investment This announcement is unheard of They are masters of the game of calculationsrdquo Giving Desai the credit for the Ranjangaon EMC he expected CM Eknath Shinde to respond and countered the claims made by Fadnavis He said the Shinde government was taking credit for the memorandums of understanding and followups done by the MVA during its tenureldquoThe Foxconn project that went to Tamil Nadu was for manufacturing mobile phones not semiconductorsrdquo he said He gave dates of meetings between January and June 2022 for the semiconductor project that went to Gujarat its approvals and site visits to Talegaon under the MVA government ldquoIn the meantime our government collapsed Then Shinde wrote to VedantaFoxconn The MVA had given more subsidies than Gujarat If the project went to Gujarat in 2021 why did the company have meetings with us in 2022rdquoThackeray added that two proposals were given for the bulk drug park project and consultations were held with NITI Aayog ldquoThey are lying about the TataAirbus project They should declare the names of Tata officials who told him about lsquoworsenedrsquo law and order Why did Nitin Gadkari write a letter to Tatardquo he asked Thackeray challenged Shinde to an open debate and asked him to explain why projects went out of Maharashtra