Refuting claims by Maha Vikas Aghadi and its former minister Jayant Patil regarding the Vedanta-Foxconn project being deliberately taken away from Maharashtra, BJP MLA Ameet Satam gave a detailed timeline about the former’s unwillingness about the mega project. He was reacting to the company’s announcement to set up the project in Gujarat instead of Maharashtra despite negotiations for months.
Blames Uddhav Thackeray’s policies
Satam challenged Jayant Patil and said that he has the fact sheet about the project. “The claims by Jayant Patil that MVA tried hard to get the project in Maharashtra is absolutely false. We have to understand a timeline of the project to expose the claims,” he said.
“It was the failure of the MVA government and its policy paralysis that the project was forced out of Maharashtra. It just showed that the state was bankrupt and was not able to negotiate timely. This is not the first time that a project has gone to other states. Earlier, Ola went to Tamil Nadu, Tesla to Karnataka snatching jobs meant for our youths,” Satam added.
The timeline
In August 2015, BJP Shiv Sena govt led by Shri Fadnavis signed an MOU and Foxconn decided to invest $15 billion in the semiconductor industry. In June 2020, MVA minister Subhash Desai announced that the MOU was junked. So it was during the MVA regime that the investment in Maharashtra was junked due to the supposedly "unaffordable " policy of MVA when the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government was in power.
“The company had preferred Maharashtra over Haryana, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Telangana because it was the only state having “Maharashtra Electronic Policy 2016” required for such industry. Though the policy was brought by Devendra Fadnavis's government”, Satam said.
“In February 2022, Vedanta and Foxconn signed an MOU for the JV and sent its team to Pune for a land survey and feasibility report. Maharashtra had a conducive atmosphere for the project, however, we lost it. The MVA leaders are now claiming that they pursued the company. But in reality, their ‘pursuance’ was unaffordable for the company,” Satam alleged.
“Telangana and Tamil Nadu were in the race for the project till June 28, 2022, two days after which the MVA government collapsed. The other two states also left the race and Maharashtra also lost it due to the MVA leaders,” the BJP MLA added.
Unable to make up for lost time
After so much delay, the new Shinde-Fadnavis government tried its best to bring back the project in Maharashtra. “A number of meetings were conducted on an immediate basis in this regard. The company had left with two options as other states were already out of the race. Almost 90 per cent of signatures were done on an MoU to bring back the project to Maharashtra and both the company and the government made the announcements,” Satam said.
However, since a lot of time was lost during the MVA regime, despite best efforts by Shinde Fadnavis govt, it may not have been feasible and viable for the company in Maharashtra due to the hardships they faced in the last two years.
