Maharashtra lost Tata-Airbus project as then-CM Uddhav 'locked himself at home', says BJP

Uddhav Thackeray. File pic

Maharashtra lost the Rs 22,000-crore Tata-Airbus military aircraft project to Gujarat because then-chief minister Uddhav Thackeray "locked himself at home", for which he should apologise to the people of the state, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Friday.

The Eknath Shinde-BJP government and the opposition in Maharashtra are engaged in a bitter war of words after European aviation major Airbus and a Tata consortium chose Vadodara in Gujarat as the site for its Rs 22,000-crore project to build C-295 military transport aircraft.

The opposition has slammed the Shinde-led government for Maharashtra losing out on another mega project after Vedanta-Foxconn's Rs 1.54 lakh crore semiconductor plant, earlier proposed to come up in Pune, was moved to Gujarat in September.

In a series of tweets, the party said proposals from Bengaluru (Karnataka), Hyderabad (Telangana), Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh were assessed in September 2021 and it was in principle decided the Tata-Airbus project will be set up at Dholera in Gujarat.

The BJP claimed there was no record of the then-Maharashtra government under Thackeray giving a proposal or even holding discussions with the company for the mega project.

Also read: Uddhav faction's plea to ECI: Ban BJP's 'illegal, unethical Rozgar Melas'

An assessment was done again in February this year, during which, too, there was no proposal to Airbus from the Maharashtra government, the BJP claimed.

The BJP, however, claimed there was record of Maharashtra Industries Minister Uday Samant discussing the Airbus project with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in

September this year (after change of government in the state).

"Uddhav Thackeray should apologise to the people of Maharashtra. The proposal went to Gujarat because Uddhav Thackeray had confined himself to his home,¿ the BJP tweeted.

Thackeray, who headed the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government (November 2019 to June 2022), underwent a cervical spine surgery in November 2021 and attended official duties from home for several months.

The BJP further slammed Thackeray by stating no industry comes to the state without any effort, along with a conducive environment.

A consortium of Airbus and the Tata group will manufacture C-295 transport aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Vadodara in Gujarat, the Defence ministry had said on Thursday.

The Rs 22,000-crore project will see a military plane being built in India for the first time by a private company, it had said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the facility that will make the aircraft.

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