Gandhinagar:
The State Finance Minister Saurabh Patel on Tuesday refused to table the agreement, signed between Tata Motors and the Gujarat government, as demanded by the Congress lawmaker, citing it as 'confidential'.
Congress MLA from Viramgam Tejashree Patel, during the question hour in Assembly, sought details from the government about the agreement signed between Tata Motors and the state government for Nano plant in Sanand.
The Congress MLA also asked the Chief Minister Anandi Patel, who handles Industry, to furnish details about loan given to Tata Motors as per the agreement. Ms Patel said that as per the agreement, the government gave loans against gross Value Added Tax (VAT) deposited by Tata Motors on the sale of Nano cars manufactured at Sanand plant.
"The agreement is about providing loan to Tata against the same amount they give us in the form of gross VAT, which was Rs 419.54 crores in last two years. Thus, the same amount has been given to them in the form of loan by us. The interest rate for loan is 0.1 per cent," he said.
He said all the states have powers to provide incentives to encourage investments.
"This is our incentive scheme. Instead of giving exemptions in sales tax, we are providing them loan against the VAT," Ms Patel added.
However, Congress chief whip Balwantsinh Rajput raised his objection against such scheme and asked Ms Patel to table the agreement, so that members can study it.
Mr Rajput also questioned if the government will take action against the company, if found to be flouting norms.
Ms Patel said, "This agreement is a confidential material. Thus, we need to check whether we can make it public. I want to assure that action will be taken if we find any violation of rules".
Leader of Opposition in the house Shankersinh Vaghela also asked the government to make the agreement public.
It could be noted that Mr Vaghela had recently, alleged that Tata has stopped the production of Nano at the Sanand plant and started manufacturing Jaguar cars, which is a violation of agreement.
"You gave land meant for another purpose to Tata and signed an agreement. I want to know that how an agreement can be confidential? Why you cannot table it in the House?" Mr Vaghela said.
Ms Patel also said that the VAT deposited by Tata belonged to Nano production only.