Mumbai: The Opposition Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Friday asked Chief Minister Eknath Shinde to protect jobs and investments in Maharashtra and not fall prey to what it called his ally Bharatiya Janata Party's plan of "diverting" big industrial projects from here to other states.
Maharashtra NCP chief spokesman Mahesh Tapase said his party has taken a serious view of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's attempt to woo Bollywood and state-based industries for investments in the northern state.
Tapase lists out lost projects to Gujarat
After Gujarat, now the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (both states are ruled by BJP) has come to "steal" our projects, Tapase alleged.
On Thursday, Adityanath held a roadshow in the financial capital in connection with an investor summit to be held in Lucknow next month and also met prominent personalities from the Hindi film industry.
Earlier, Vedanta-Foxconn and Tata-Airbus projects, initially planned to come up in Maharashtra, were diverted to Gujarat to enable the BJP win the Assembly elections in the neighbouring state, the NCP leader said.
And now the saffron outfit seems to be playing the same game and attempting to move ventures from Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh keeping an eye on the number of Lok Sabha seats in the northern state, Tapase said in a statement.
Uttar Pradesh accounts for 80 Lok Sabha seats, more than any other state.
The BJP has clearly started its calculation for the 2024 general elections and hence party Chief Ministers are coming to Mumbai to "strip" Maharashtra of its wealth created by the blood and sweat of Marathi people in the past 60 years, said the NCP leader.
He asked Shinde to thwart this "conspiracy" of the BJP and save jobs and livelihoods of the people of Maharashtra.
The BJP, which is part of the Shinde-led government, clearly has "dubious" plans and the chief minister should ensure no project goes out of Maharashtra, Tapase said.
