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Vendanta-Foxconn row: 'Is Maha Pakistan?' Aaditya Thackeray on Fadnavis' ‘Gujarat is no Pak’ remark

Aaditya Thackeray on Saturday hit back at Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over his ‘Gujarat is no Pakistan’ comment. (HT)

He was addressing an event to pay respect to social reformer and his great-grandfather Keshav Thackeray, also known as Prabhodankar Thackeray in Maharashtra.

Speaking at the event, Aaditya Thackeray questioned, "Is Maharashtra Pakistan that you drove the project (Vendanta-Foxconn) to Gujarat? What mistake has the youth here committed?"

Fadnavis on Friday said that Gujarat had won the Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project worth 1.5 lakh crore by declaring that the neighboring state was “no Pakistan".

The deputy chief minister of Maharashtra charged corruption on the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) administration. The BJP leader asserted that, while the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA administration was in office, "10% commission" had to be paid before utilizing any subsidies.

He singled out the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena without mentioning the group specifically for rejecting high-profile initiatives like the Ratnagiri refinery and the Wadhwan port in Palghar, as well as the Mumbai Metro phase 3 and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. When he first assumed the position of deputy chief minister, he met with Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal. The state gave the business a custom offer to compete with Gujarat's, but Fadnavis claimed he was informed that a decision to relocate the project to the neighboring state was about to be made.

Maharashtra underperformed Gujarat in drawing foreign investment during the MVA administration, but Fadnavis said that Maharashtra will catch up to Gujarat in the next two years.

"Gujarat is no Pakistan. It is our brother. This is a healthy competition. We want to get ahead of Karnataka, everyone," Fadnavis said.

Maharashtra could hardly beat Gujarat with the opposition's "stop everything" strategy, he claimed. When he served as chief minister from 2014 to 2019, according to Fadnavis, the amount of foreign investment in the state increased from $6 billion in 2013 to $26 billion.

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