The Congress Wednesday used data from the Reserve Bank of India to taunt the Devendra Fadnavis government over its Magnetic Maharashtra initiative, questioning the government’s claims on new investment commitments made at the investor summit. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had claimed Tuesday that Maharashtra signed MoUs worth Rs 16 lakh crore at the summit, including Rs 12.1 lakh crore worth of MoUs involving private sector investments. Hitting out at the government, Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan said the initiative was nothing but a misleading image building exercise by the government. “This is nothing new. In the last three and a half years, this government has done nothing but resorted to misleading announcements,” he said. Sharpening its offensive, the Congress has now demanded that the government bring out a white paper on investments into the state. It also wants the government to disclose the expenditure incurred on the advertisement blitz and event management for the summit. While the Maharashtra Congress chief interacted with the media in Mumbai, former CM Prithviraj Chavan and former minister Vijay Wadettiwar spoke on the issue in Pune and Nagpur, respectively. Accusing the Fadnavis government of creating a mirage of development and change, Ashok Chavan alleged that the statistics on unemployment, worsening fiscal outlook of the state’s economy, and the rising tax burden on citizens presented a contrary picture on the ground. Chavan said that RBI’s latest data on corporate investments revealed that Maharashtra had fallen behind Gujarat. He further claimed that data from the Union Ministry for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises showed lesser number of MSMEs from Maharashtra had registered with the ministry as compared to Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh. “Two years ago, the Maharashtra government had similarly claimed receiving investments of Rs 8 lakh crore during the Make in India summit. It had claimed this would create 30 lakh jobs. People of Maharashtra have not seen new job creation in the past two years. The big investments haven’t come either. People have lost faith in this government,” said Chavan. Taking a jibe at Fadnavis, he added that Maharashtra under him had become ‘pathetic Maharashtra’. The Congress also questioned the government’s “misplaced priorities” over the signing of the MoU with Richard Branson-led Virgin group to build the futuristic hyperloop train service between Mumbai and Pune. The technology is yet to be tested in developed countries. According to Chavan, this was nothing but one more pre-election announcement. “On the eve of the Gujarat assembly polls, the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) announced sea plane services. Nothing came out of it later. Now, they have announced the hyperloop. The result would be the same,” he said. The Congress has also questioned claims made by the government over investments in the power sector, questioning Fadnavis’s plan to shift unproductive farm workers to the service sector. For all the latest Mumbai News, download Indian Express App

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