While the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal has been trying to attract big ticket investment, Sahara Group chairman Subroto Roy Friday said he felt unwanted in the state.
The chairman of the group which has business interests in finance, infrastructure & housing, media & entertainment, consumer merchandise retail venture etc, said very few states in the country welcome investors.
"I had a discussion with Banerjee when she was not the chief minister. After the (2011 assembly) elections, I tried to contact some of the seniors here, but there was no call back, there was no response. So I thought probably I was not needed here," said Roy while commenting about his plans to invest in Bengal.
"It's not only Bengal, the whole country, except a few states, has this problem. States like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh are the only few which are very welcoming and positive about investment," said Roy.
Roy, whose ambitious tourism project in Sunderbans failed to take off due to environment non-clearance, described former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as "very enterprising".
"The Sunderbans project was very ambitious and would have transformed Bengal. Unfortunately, it ran into trouble on the environment front. While the then government too got shaky on the environment front, Bhattacharjee as chief minister was very enterprising," said Roy.
Roy said the Group will set up a Rs. 400 crore medical college with a 500 bed hospital in the city, besides a township near Durgapur in Burdwan district.
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Besides Bengal, the Group would be going on an investment spree across the country in various sectors including education, health, tourism etc.
"The new projects that we will be undertaking will yield us annual revenue of Rs.18 lakh crores in the next eight to ten years," said Roy adding that the Group would be hiring 48,000 executives and 2.5 lakh lower level employees.
About the succession plan, Roy said a 50-60 member trust was being created which will look after the day to day affairs of the business and the trustees who will be drawn up from various arms of the business will not be entitled to any profit sharing.