Aircraft project flies to Gujarat, Shinde govt. faces Oppn. flak

 Aircraft project flies to Gujarat, Shinde govt. faces Oppn. flak

Parties blame the govt. for losing yet another big-ticket project, even as the ruling coalition maintains that the project moving to Gujarat had nothing to do with the upcoming election

No industrialist had any faith left in the Shinde govt, says Aaditya Thackeray. PTI-

Shoumojit Banerjee Pune

A fierce bout of political sabre-rattling erupted in Maharashtra on Friday as the government came under heavy flak from the Opposition parties for allegedly ‘losing’ another big-ticket project to Gujarat after the Centre announced that the ₹22,000 crore Tata-Airbus project (for manufacturing military transport aircraft) would now come up in Vadodara despite the State government’s efforts to locate it in Nagpur.

Coming barely a month after the ‘flight’ of the ₹1.5 lakh crore Vedanta-Foxconn project to Gujarat, the Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition was accused of “ineptness” in “repeatedly losing big projects” with massive employment generation potential in Maharashtra as the opposition Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) demanded the resignations of State Industries Minister Uday Samant and CM Eknath Shinde.

Denying that the Shinde-Fadnavis government ‘lost’ the Tata-Airbus project to Gujarat, Mr. Samant accused the Opposition leaders of “deliberately attempting to mislead the youth” and the State’s public.

He further stressed that the award of the project to Gujarat had nothing to do with the upcoming Assembly election there.

Speaking in Pune on Friday, former Minister and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction leader Aaditya Thackeray lambasted the government by remarking that no industrialist had any faith left in the government.

Remarking that not a single big project had landed in Maharashtra’s kitty since the formation of the new government, former Maharashtra CM and senior Congressman Prithviraj Chavan said there was a regrettable trend of every big-ticket project that was meant for some other State being spirited away to Gujarat since PM Modi’s ascendancy.

Stating that the “sheer incompetence” of CM Shinde was responsible for the loss of Tata-Airbus project to Gujarat, NCP spokesperson Mahesh Tapase expressed astonishment that Mr. Shinde “repeatedly failed to retain investment and projects in Maharashtra”.