3-Member Committee To Probe Why Maharashtra Losing Big-Ticket Projects

The Maharashtra government will form a three-member committee headed by a retired judge to probe how big ticket industrial projects chose destinations other than the state in the last three-four months, a state minister announced on Wednesday.

State Industries Minister Uday Samant also said that a White Paper will be released soon to bring out facts in the matter.

The Eknath Shinde-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Maharashtra, formed on June 30 this year, has been facing the Opposition's fire over the shifting of mega projects out of the state. In September, Vedanta-Foxconn's Rs 1.54 lakh crore semiconductor plant, earlier proposed to come up in Pune, moved to Gujarat. In October, the state lost one more big project to Gujarat after a consortium of European aviation firm Airbus and the Tata group selected Vadodara for its Rs 22,000-crore project to manufacture military aircraft.

"A noise is being made for politics that these projects preferred destinations other than Maharashtra (only in the last three-four months since Eknath Shinde became the chief minister)," Mr Samant told reporters.

"But ignoring (that noise), this must be probed (that how did the companies go out of Maharashtra). Therefore, a committee will be formed. The three-member panel will be headed by a retired judge and two retired senior bureaucrats," he said.

The government, and particularly Mr Samant, has been facing attacks from former Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray over big-ticket choosing Gujarat over Maharashtra.

"In 60 days, they (committee) will probe how did the projects go out of Maharashtra, when were the meetings (regarding projects) held, when were the MoUs signed…They will see the minutes of the meetings. All the doubts (about employment generating projects choosing states other than Maharashtra) in the minds of youth will be cleared through this probe," Mr Samant added.