 "Piyush Goyal")
Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday alleged that the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) and Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train projects got delayed due to an "unethical" government in Maharashtra.
He was referring to the previous Maha Vikas Aghadi or MVA coalition government which had Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress as its main constituents. The DFC project picked up pace after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the Centre in 2014, Goyal said.
"Had a party (Shiv Sena) in Maharashtra not betrayed us and formed a totally unethical government, three years may not have been wasted. Even the Bullet Train project would have progressed rapidly. That government wasted our three years. They did not let the project (DFC) move forward," said the BJP leader, addressing a gathering of professionals here.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena parted ways with the BJP in 2019 and joined hands with NCP and Congress. The event in Vadodara was organised by the ruling BJP as part of its campaign for the upcoming Gujarat Assembly elections. Goyal also targeted the Thackeray-led Sena faction over the Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor plant controversy. "A young Shiv Sena leader keeps asking why the plant went to Gujarat (instead of Maharashtra)," he said, apparently referring to Aaditya Thackeray. "I want to tell him that such decisions are not taken in two months. When such a huge investment is in question, the investors have to take into account 100 factors," said Goyal. A Taiwanese delegation told him recently that they did not consider Maharashtra as a location for new offices or factories in the last two or three years because of "political instability and corruption", Goyal claimed. "People want stability, credibility and reliability to set up industry. This is the reason why Gujarat has a host of industries and now defence and semiconductor players are also seeing potential here," the Union minister said. The entire world is today envious of India because of its democracy, democratic institutions, judiciary, media, free speech as well as its decisive and powerful leadership, he said.
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