Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said that the state of Gujarat that bagged the Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor plant project is not Pakistan, amid a political controversy over Maharashtra losing the project to Gujarat at an advanced stage. “Gujarat is no Pakistan. It is our brother. It is a healthy competition. We want to go ahead of Gujarat, Karnataka, everyone,” Fadnavis said at the event. He added that despite Vedanta’s executive chairman Anil Agarwal’s clarification on Twitter, the controversy continues to rage.
Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party attacked the Eknath Shinde-Fadnavis government for losing Vedanta. The unit was supposed to move closer to Pune, but Vedanta-Foxconn signed a memorandum of understanding with the Gujarat government on September 13 in a surprise move – sparking a major political controversy. The opposition has alleged that the present government in Maharashtra is working at the behest of the Center and is working for the development of Gujarat at the expense of Maharashtra.
Fadnavis said he himself met Anil Agarwal after taking over as deputy chief minister and offered the company a “tailor-made” package to match the Gujarat deal. “But he said that the decision to shift the unit to Gujarat was in the final stages at that time,” Fadnavis said. While Fadnavis claimed that Vedanta had taken the decision to shift the project to Gujarat, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Aaditya Thackeray gave a timeline that a high-powered committee meeting on the project was held on July 15, followed by an announcement by the Shinde-Fadnavis government to the media and the state assembly that the project is coming to Maharashtra.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government collapsed in late June following a revolt by Shinde and his MLA followers. According to reports, Eknath Shinde wrote a letter to Anil Agarwal on July 26, the same time the new government announced that the project was coming to Maharashtra. In his letter, he wrote that both Vedanta-Foxconn’s demands — Cabinet approval and Center alignment — were on track.
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