Is Maharashtra Pakistan? Aaditya Thackeray hits back at Fadnavis on Vedanta-Foxconn row

A day after Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, in his comment on the row over the Vedanta-Foxconn deal going to Gujarat, said Gujarat is not Pakistan, former Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray asked whether Maharashtra is Pakistan.

“Is Maharashtra Pakistan that you drove the project to Gujarat? What mistake has the youth of Maharashtra done?” Aaditya Thackeray said at an event in Mumbai amid the ongoing controversy.

Maharashtra lost the ₹1.54 lakh crore Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor plant deal to Gujarat after Vedanta and Foxconn signed an MoU with the Gujarat government on September 13. The project was earlier expected to be housed in Pune. The Gujarat versus Maharashtra narrative got fuelled as the opposition blamed the Shinde government to work under the instruction of New Delhi and allow the project to pass to Gujarat — the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah.

Dismissing these claims, deputy chief minister Fadnavis on Friday said he met Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal soon after the Shinde government took charge and was told that the company decided to set up their project in Gujarat. “Gujarat is no Pakistan. It is our brother. This is a healthy competition. We want to go ahead of Gujarat, Karnataka, everyone,” Fadnavis said questioning why Maharashtra ranked behind Gujarat in attracting foreign investments during the tenure of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government.

Amid the row, Vedanta chairman Anil Agarwal clarified that the decision to choose Gujarat for the plant was an independent and professional one, while the Maharashtra leadership(Shinde-Fadnavis government) made a huge effort to outbid other states with a competitive offer.

The loss of the project resulted in the loss of one lakh jobs, Aaditya Thackeray claimed, blaming the government for betraying the youth of Maharashtra.