Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Wednesday said it is not easy to shift Mumbai's film city elsewhere even though attempts have been made for it.
Raut was talking to reporters amid Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's ongoing two-day visit to Mumbai where he is meeting film personalities and industrialists.
"It is not easy to shift Mumbai's film city to another place. The film industry in south India is also big. There are film cities in West Bengal and Punjab, too. Will Yogi ji visit these places, too, and talk to directors and artists there? Or is he going to do it only in Mumbai?" Sanjay Raut said.
Adityanath had earlier unveiled an ambitious plan to set up a film city and rolled out an open offer to the film fraternity to come to Uttar Pradesh. The UP government earlier approved a proposal for setting up a film city in Sector 21 along the Yamuna Expressway in Gautam Buddh Nagar.
The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi partners like the Shiv Sena and the Congress have made it clear that big business or Bollywood cannot be shifted out of Mumbai which will continue to be the country's commercial and glamour capital.
Ahead of Yogi Adityanath's visit, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Tuesday warned he will not let anybody "forcibly" take businesses away from the state.
"We are not jealous if someone progresses, we do not have any problem with someone's progress if one competes. But if you are going to forcibly take anything away, then of course, I won't let it happen and you (industrialists) will not be willing to go," Thackeray said at an event organised by IMC, a small businesses-focused lobby grouping, here.
Senior Congress leader and Maharashtra PWD Minister Ashok Chavan too alleged that BJP was scheming to take away a "slice of Bollywood" to the northern state.
"When BJP was in power in Maharashtra, many industries and offices were shifted to Gujarat. Though the government changed in Maharashtra, the BJP is now readying a script to take away a slice of Bollywood in the name of the Uttar Pradesh government. Whatever had happened in the tenure of the BJP, we won't let it happen again," Chavan tweeted.
Meanwhile, Yogi Adityanath rang the bell at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) marking the listing of bonds of the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), on Wednesday morning. Adityanath attended a special listing function organized at the BSE Towers this morning where he performed the traditional bell-ringing ceremony, hoping to herald a new investment start for Uttar Pradesh.
Adityanath arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday for a series of meetings intended to sell the state as the new destination for business and investments besides Bollywood to Uttar Pradesh.
He met Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar on Tuesday night and discussed the latter's upcoming film 'Ram Setu'. According to the release issued by the UP's Information and Public Relations Department, the Chief Minister spoke with Akshay Kumar about the innumerable possibilities for film shoots in Uttar Pradesh.
(Inputs from Agencies)
