Congress demands White Paper on 3 Vibrant Gujarat Global Summits

Vadodara, Jan 13The Gujarat unit of the Congress today demanded a 'White Paper' on the three Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summits, which the Narendra Modi government had organised to attract huge investments in the state and alleged that they were nothing but a ''politically motivated tamasha'' of the Modi government to remain in power after the forthcoming assembly elections..

Addressing a press conference here, Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki and leader of opposition Arjun Modhwadia made a reference to the government's claim that the state had received investment proposals worth Rs 3.54 lakh crore in different sectors on the very first day of the two-day summit now being held at Science City.

He said the government must come foward with a White Paper on the three summits it organised in 2003, 2005 and 2007, and the status of all the proposed projects for which MOUs were signed.

Alleging that the government had misled the people of Gujarat by giving impressive figures of investment proposals during these summits, they said several projects belonging to Reliance, Essar and ONGC that figured in the list of Summit-2007, were already approved and undergoing expansion.

In 2003 Summit, though the government claimed that it signed MOUs worth Rs 66,000 crore, projects worth only Rs.17,000 crore really came to the state. Similarly, projects worth Rs 10,000 crore were implemented as against the government's claim of having attracted investment to the tune of Rs 1.07 lakh crore in the 2005 Global Investors' Summit, the state Congress leaders pointed out.

Mr Solanki and Mr Modhwadia also criticised the Chief Minister for trying to take all credit for development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the state.

The UPA government had approved 33 SEZs in Gujarat and had invested a whopping Rs 40,000 crore to develop road and rail networks in the state, they claimed and warned the government against giving land to a handful of corporate houses at throwaway prices to set up SEZs.

Despite holding investors' summits, the Congress leaders felt that the BJP government had failed to bring any major projects into the state since 2003, neither had they created job opportunities for lakhs of unemployed youths.

UNI