Maharashtra gets electronics cluster, Opposition says not enough

Devendra Fadnavis and Aaditya Thackeray. File pic

The state government and the Centre have huddled to silence the Opposition's 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 protests.

The Rs 500-crore EMC will be set-up on 297 acres of land and is expected to be ready in 32 months. It will manufacture industrial and consumer electronics, solar PV, e-mobility 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 2,000 crore and create 5,000 jobs in the coming years.

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"The people [Opposition] who have opposed a refinery have no moral right to talk about investment," he said, adding that false propaganda was circulated about the Vedanta-Foxconn project [that will be set up in Gujarat]. "In 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 government's tenure and yet we are being blamed for it. A fake narrative is being run here by a section of media and politicians," he said.

He added that the Tata-Airbus project was planned in 2021 to be set up in Gujarat. "When 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 investment." "Yet, 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 Gujarat," Fadnavis said.

The 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. "How can a project shift to another state in just a week's 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 production."

According to Fadnavis, projects worth Rs 25,000 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. "Our government will make Maharashtra a number one state in investment in the next two years. The chemical refinery will happen in the state," he added, insisting that investment came only when law and order was good. "Everyone knows what has happened in the past two-and-a-half years."

‘Expect bigger investment'

Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray asked the government to understand the difference between R2,000 crore and R1.50 lakh crore (Vedanta-Foxconn). "We expected a much bigger investment. This announcement is unheard of... They are masters of the game of calculations..." 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 follow-ups done by the MVA during its tenure.

"The Foxconn project that went to Tamil Nadu was for manufacturing mobile phones, not semiconductors," 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. "In the meantime, our government collapsed. Then, Shinde wrote to Vedanta-Foxconn. 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 2022?"

Thackeray added that two proposals were given for the bulk drug park project and consultations were held with NITI Aayog. "They are lying about the Tata-Airbus project. They should declare the names of Tata officials who told him about ‘worsened' law and order. Why did Nitin Gadkari write a letter (to Tata)?" he asked. Thackeray challenged Shinde to an open debate and asked him to explain why projects went out of Maharashtra.