Maharashtra seems to have lost out on Saudi Arabian Aramco’s huge investment in a green field refinery project if one were to go by the statement made by a prominent BJP leader. Maharashtra BJP, on Wednesday, sought an explanation from Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena on whether their opposition to the proposed refinery complex in Maharashtra, where Aramco was going to make a significant investment, was aimed at aiding Pakistan as the Saudi Arabian public petroleum and natural gas company has now decided to invest in a refinery project at Gwadar in Pakistan instead of India.
Maharashtra BJP vice president Madhav Bhandari lashed out at Shiv Sena (UBT), accusing them of trying to torpedo the project. “Your party was opposed to that project all along. Now Aramco is going to invest in Gwadar in Pakistan. You owe an explanation to the people of the country whether your intention was to help Pakistan obtain the project,” said Bhandari at a media briefing in Mumbai.
Nanar project was proposed when Devendra Fadnavis was the chief minister of Maharashtra and Shiv Sena was part of the government. It had opposed the project on the grounds that the people of Konkan region did not want a destructive and polluting project. After Sena broke its alliance with the BJP and formed MVA government in 2019, the project at Nanar was more or less stalled. It was revived after the then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray sent a letter to the Union government in which he said that the project could be implemented in Barsu, a few kilometers away from Nanar.
However, after he was dethroned following a coup by Eknath Shinde in June 2022, the Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena began opposing the Barsu refinery project as well. Barsu project was going to be smaller in scale compared to Nanar.
The attack by Bhandari suggests that Aramco is looking at other project sites and has chosen Gwadar and is not likely to be part of the project at Barsu even if the governments at the state and Centre manage to convince local population.
Bhandari called Uddhav Thackeray led MVA government ‘Vasooli Sarkar’ (recovery government), which pretended to give from one hand while making sure to recover the same with the other hand.
Citing the recent white paper on industries by Maharashtra Industries Minister Uday Samant, Bhandari said the white paper gives a detailed explanation on why many industries did not invest in Maharashtra. “MVA was interested only in Vasooli. The white paper gives a detailed explanation as to why Vedanta-Foxconn semiconductor project did not invest in Maharashtra. There are examples of other industries that too left because of the policies of the MVA government. Their ministers were only interested in the ‘cut’ from the industries who were keen on investing in the state,” alleged Bhandari.
He further claimed that Maharashtra has regained the top position in attracting investment after Shinde-Fadnavis government came to power in 2022. “From 2014-19, Maharashtra was at the top of states in attracting investments from industries. After MVA came to power the top rank went to Karnataka and in the subsequent year it went to Gujarat. Now after MahaYuti (grand alliance) came back to power in July 2022, the state has regained its top position,” added Bhandari.