Barely a month after losing out the Vedanta-Foxconn project to neighbouring Gujarat, the Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis-led government in Maharashtra suffered the loss of another big-ticket project after the Centre announced that the ₹22,000 crore Tata-Airbus project for manufacturing military transport aircraft would now come up in Vadodara in Gujarat despite the State government’s efforts to locate it in Nagpur.
The Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition came under heavy Opposition flak on Thursday, which charged it with ineptness of repeatedly losing big projects with the potential for massive employment generation in Maharashtra.
The Tata-Airbus C-295 project, involving the manufacture of 56 military transport aircraft which is to replace the IAF’s older Avro aircraft, is to be a manufacturing milestone in which military aircraft is to be manufactured indigenously by a private company in order to boost the Make-in-India defence programme.
16 of the aircraft are to be delivered in flyaway condition by Airbus Defence and Space SA, Spain and the remaining 40 are to be manufactured in India by the Indian aircraft contractor - Tata consortium of Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) led by TASL.
While the Centre’s announcement that the project would come up in Gujarat is expected to strengthen the BJP’s electoral chances in the poll-bound state, the move comes as a major embarrassment to the Shinde-Fadnavis government, which had been attempting to locate the project at the Multi-modal International Cargo Hub and Airport (MIHAN) in Nagpur.
Unsurprisingly, the Opposition Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena faction and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) pounced on the ruling government, still smarting from the ‘flight’ of the ₹1.5 lakh crore Vedanta-Foxconn project, and demanded the resignations of State Industries Minister Uday Samant and Chief Minister Shinde.
Former Minister and Worli MLA Aaditya Thackeray lambasted the Shinde-Fadnavis government in a Twitter post.
“Another project! I have voiced this since July, asking Khoke Sarkar [the Uddhav camp’s moniker for the Shinde government] to try for it. I wonder why every project is going to other states in the last 3 months. Loss of faith in khoke sarkar is evident on industry level. Will the industry minister [Mr. Samant] resign after losing 4 projects?” he tweeted.
Stating that the “sheer incompetence” of CM Shinde was responsible for the loss of Tata-Airbus to Gujarat after Vedanta-Foxconn, NCP spokeperson Mahesh Tapase expressed astonishment that Mr. Shinde “repeatedly failed to retain investment and projects in Maharashtra.”
“[Mr.] Shinde is busy safeguarding his post of the chief minister even as Gujarat continues its surgical strike on Maharashtra... Taking a cue from Liz Truss (former U.K. Prime Minister), [Mr.] Shinde should immediately resign as CM for not being able to uphold the state’s interest,” said Mr. Tapase.
Uddhav camp MLA Sachin Ahir said that his party had been predicting that many other projects would go to Gujarat and now their fears were being realized despite Mr. Shinde’s hollow promises of Maharashtra getting bigger projects from the Centre to compensate for Vedanta-Foxconn.
On the defensive, BJP spokesman Keshav Upadhye stressed that the Tata-Airbus project had gone to Gujarat a year ago and it was the erstwhile Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government that had lost it.
“The MVA government had not written a single letter to bring the project to Maharashtra despite discussions being held by the Centre with Airbus in 2021. Now they are merely trying to cover up their incompetence,” Mr. Upadhye.
