Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday hit out at Eknath Shinde-led government after Maharashtra lost a multi-billion dollar project to Gujarat. For the unversed, Defence Ministry announced that a consortium of Airbus and the Tata group will manufacture C-295 transport aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) in Vadodara, Gujarat.
The project is worth ₹22,000 crore under which a military plane will be produced in India for the first time by a private company. With the announcement about the Tata-Airbus C-295 transport aircraft project coming up in Gujarat Thackeray slammed the Eknath Shinde led government and asked it why the project that was supposed to come up in Maharashtra went to the neighbouring state.Thackeray, accused the Shinde government of not being serious about the state's progress and criticised it for "failing to protect the state's interests".
Speaking to reporters here in Shirur tehsil in Pune district, Thackeray asked, "Will the state government give answers to why these projects are going out? This is the fourth project which has gone away from Maharashtra since the traitor government has come to power in the state. They always boast that they have a double-engine government, but although one engine of the central government is working, the state government's engine has failed."He added that the previous MVA government led by his father Uddhav Thackeray had managed to bring investment to the state even during the pandemic, but this government has failed to do so. "CM Shinde goes to Delhi on a regular basis. But he goes there for himself and not for Maharashtra. I never heard him say that the Tata-Airbus project should come to Maharashtra.
The former Maharashtra leader said he was not sad because the project was going to some other state. "The question is why is it not coming to our state? Why this new government is not able to bring projects to the state? In the last few days, CMs from other states are coming to Maharashtra and interacting with the local industrialists here to seek investments, but our CM goes to Delhi, and he does so for himself," he said. The Worli MLA said that big and small projects used to come to Maharashtra because of merit. "But today, despite having the merit, these projects are going to the other state," he said.The state government is not at all serious about Maharashtra's progress, Thackeray alleged.