The Hindu : National : Chavan takes on Modi

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Wednesday, Apr 29, 2009
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National

Chavan takes on Modi

Meena Menon

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Tuesday took on his Gujarat counterpart and declared that Maharashtra was number one in attracting investment in the country. He said he had waited this long, so that he could give a consolidated response to the various allegations made by Narendra Modi during the campaign.

Mr. Chavan said the Nano project not coming to Maharashtra was not a yardstick to judge the State. If Gujarat was the benchmark for investment, Mr. Chavan asked why a newsmagazine in a recent article on India’s most competitive states, put Gujarat at number three. Maharashtra still leads the country in investment and it was followed by Tamil Nadu, he said, pointing to the issue of the newsmagazine.

The Congress party and its allies were going to the people on the issue of development and in Mumbai alone projects worth Rs. 20,000 crore were underway. Most of these would be completed in two or three years’ time.

The city would soon have a metro rail, a mono rail in a few years and the Bandra Worli Sealink was almost complete. Never before had the city seen so much investment in infrastructure.

He said he had campaigned in Anand and Baroda in Gujarat and found that farmers get only six hours of power for agriculture, while Mr. Modi says there is 24 hours electricity. Mr. Modi’s contentions were false and misleading, he said.

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