Charges fly thick and fast in Maha after Gujarat lands mega Tata-Airbus aircraft project

Maharashtra government faced Opposition fire on Friday after a consortium of European aviation firm Airbus and the Tata group selected Vadodara in Gujarat for a Rs 22,000-crore project to manufacture military aircraft, a second setback for the state after it lost out on Vedanta-Foxconn's semiconductor plant.

Mumbai: The four-month-old Eknath Shinde-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharashtra faced Opposition fire on Friday after a consortium of European aviation firm Airbus and the Tata group selected Vadodara in Gujarat for a Rs 22,000-crore project to manufacture military aircraft, a second setback for the state after it lost out on Vedanta-Foxconn's semiconductor plant.

While Maharashtra Industries Minister Uday Samant denied any lapses and claimed the deal to set up the Tata-Airbus C-295 transport aircraft plant in Gujarat had been signed by the Centre in September last year when the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was ruling the state, the BJP targeted former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray over the issue.

Leading the opposition charge, former Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray said investors did not have confidence in the Shinde-BJP government and this was resulting in projects moving out of the state. The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader slammed Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, saying after taking charge in June he was busy addressing political gatherings instead of visiting other states seeking investments.

He was speaking to reporters in Pune in the backdrop of the Tata-Airbus project moving to Vadodara. "This is the fourth project that has gone out of Maharashtra. I saw the state industry minister's (Uday Samant) statement on the issue this morning. It seems the way he was unaware on Vedanta-Foxconn (which too moved its semiconductor project to Gujarat from Pune), he is unaware about the Tata-Airbus project," Thackeray alleged.

The opposition had earlier lashed out at the Shinde-led government for Maharashtra losing out on another mega project after Vedanta-Foxconn's Rs 1.54 lakh crore semiconductor plant, earlier proposed to come up in Pune, was moved to Gujarat in September. The previous MVA government had set up an 'ease of compliance' committee to get such projects but one wonders if the panel has even met once in the last three months (since the Shinde-BJP government took over in June), Thackeray added.

"We can see industrialists do not have confidence in this 'khoke sarkar' (government formed out of bribery worth crores of rupees as alleged by the Sena's Uddhav Thackeray faction) and that is why every investment which was supposed to come to Maharashtra is now moving to other states," the former minister alleged. He said the MVA government had managed to get Rs 6.50 lakh crore worth of investments even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with 99 per cent of these memorandums of understanding (MoUs) getting executed.

Another opposition outfit Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) expressed disappointment over the military aircraft project going to Gujarat instead of coming to Maharashtra. NCP leader Ajit Pawar said the Shinde-led government must take some action about big-ticket project going out of the state. "No doubt projects should be developed in multiple states, but why shift a project proposed to be set up in one state to another? Despite the conducive environment in Maharashtra, projects are being shifted elsewhere," the former deputy chief minister said.
Maharashtra Congress leader Sachin Sawant said it was the Modi government's wish that all important projects should go to Gujarat.

"The Tata-Airbus project was shown the Dholera site in Gujarat by the Centre but it is going to Vadodara. This proves my point that Dholera (in Ahmedabad district) is an impractical site. It is the Modi government's wish that all projects should go to Gujarat. Maharashtra's (prospects) are being consciously damaged," tweeted Sawant. He said BJP leaders do not have the courage to confront the Modi government about financial losses being caused to Maharashtra.

"The Industries Minister (Uday Samant) said the MoU (for military aircraft project) was signed a year ago, but that was between the Centre and Airbus and not with Gujarat?" he said in another tweet. However, industries minister Samant slammed the opposition for creating "confusion" over the project and said the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up the aircraft unit in Gujarat was signed by the Centre in September 2021 when the MVA government was in power in the state.

"Be it the Vedanta-Foxconn project or the Tata-Airbus project, the decision about where to set up these projects was taken before this (Shinde-led) government came to power in June this year. The Opposition is doing nothing except to criticise and create confusion among people," Samant said. The ruling BJP said Maharashtra lost the Rs 22,000-crore aircraft project to Gujarat because then-chief minister Uddhav Thackeray "locked himself at home", for which he should apologise to the people of the state.

In a series of tweets, the party said proposals from Bengaluru (Karnataka), Hyderabad (Telangana), Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh were assessed in September 2021 and it was in principle decided the Tata-Airbus project will be set up at Dholera in Gujarat. The BJP claimed there was no record of the then-Maharashtra government under Thackeray giving a proposal or even holding discussions with the company for the mega project.

An assessment was done again in February this year, during which, too, there was no proposal to Airbus from the Maharashtra government, the BJP claimed. The BJP, however, claimed there was record of Samant discussing the Airbus project with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in September this year (after change of government in the state). Last month, Samant had said the Tata-Airbus aircraft manufacturing project would come up near Nagpur in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

Maharashtra Youth Congress workers staged a protest in front of the chief minister's official residence in Nagpur against the backdrop of the Tata-Airbus project slipping out of the hands of Maharashtra and moving to adjoining Gujarat.
The workers led by Maharashtra Youth Congress chief Kunal Raut were taken away from the spot and detained for some time, police officials said.

The defence ministry on Thursday said a consortium of Airbus and the Tata group will manufacture C-295 transport aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Vadodara in Gujarat. Under this project, a military plane will be produced in India for the first time by a private company. (PTI)