Congress accuses Modi govt of showing ‘insensitivity, hostility’ towards Maharashtra

PTI, Jul 14, 2024, 1:18 PM IST

New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday accused the Modi government of showing “insensitivity and hostility” towards Maharashtra, alleging that the past ten years have seen the state “consistently squeezed out of multiple key projects and investments”.

The Opposition party’s attack came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted at an event in Mumbai on Saturday that his aim is to make Maharashtra the world’s big financial powerhouse and to make Mumbai a global fintech capital.

In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications, Jairam Ramesh, said, “Last evening in Mumbai, the self-anointed non-biological Prime Minister claimed that his ‘aim is to make Maharashtra the world’s big financial powerhouse and to make Mumbai a global fintech capital’. This is his trademark lie.”

“Despite Mumbai having been the financial capital of India for 200 years, Mr. Modi has repeatedly refused to set up an IFSC in Mumbai. An International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) has been set up only in GIFT City in Gujarat. Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2006 had begun the effort to set it up in Mumbai,” Ramesh said.

Land in the Bandra Kurla Complex had also been set aside for the IFSC but it was reallocated to the bullet train, costing Mumbai potentially 2 lakh jobs, he claimed.

“In fact, the past ten years have seen Maharashtra consistently squeezed out of multiple key projects and investments – the attempted shift of the diamond industry to Surat, the shifting of industrial projects like the Tata-Airbus manufacturing plant and the (now-failed) Vedanta-Foxconn chip factory, and the transfer of Central Government institutions like the Textile Commissionerate Office and the Dattopant Thengadi National Board for Workers Education and Development,” Ramesh said.

“All this appears to be part of a larger insensitivity and hostility towards Maharashtra, as further evidenced by Mr. Modi’s continued refusal for the last ten years to declare Marathi a classical Indian language,” the Congress leader said.

His remarks came a day after Modi, during the event to launch projects costing Rs 29,000 crore in road, railway, and port sectors, said, “Our aim is to improve everyone’s standard of living and make quality of life the best. This is why efforts are being made to better the connectivity of areas close to Mumbai.”