Vedanta-Foxconn project going to Gujarat is part of conspiracy to reduce Maharashtra's importance: NCP MP Sule

Pune: Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule on Wednesday alleged that Gujarat bagging a mega Vedanta-Foxconn semi-conductor plant was part of a "conspiracy" to reduce Maharashtra's importance.

The Union government was consistently taking steps to "demean" Maharashtra, she claimed. The Lok Sabha member from Baramati said she was not against Gujarat getting the big-ticket project, but it happened after a Memorandum of Understanding for the same had been signed with the Maharashtra government.

"It is part of a larger conspiracy to bring down the importance of Maharashtra, the only state in the country poised to become a trillion dollar economy," she told reporters here. "I am making these allegations consciously...the Union government is consistently taking steps to demean Maharashtra. There will be a long-term setback for Maharashtra as we continue to lose more and more mega investment projects," she said.

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis should stop their "hospitality tours" and focus on the issue of unemployment, Sule said. The CM and his deputy were free to go and visit all the Ganesh pandals and celebrate everything but Maharashtra needed a focused chief minister, she added, in a dig at Shinde and Fadnavis's visits to Ganesh pandals during the recent Ganesh festival.

"If the need be, they should have two CMs, one can attend 'yatras' and the other can run the state," she further said. This was not the time for blame game and Shinde and Fadnavis should hold an all-party meeting over these issues, she added.