Press Note 04/01/2011 Vibrant Gujarat Eng

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OFFICE OF THE LEADER OF OPPOSITION

Gujarat Vidhansabha, Gandhinagar.

Press Note 04^th January, 2011

• Joint Legislative Committee should be formed to probe into Vibrant Gujarat related irregularities.
• A status report of all MOUs signed in the last summit should be made public before Vibrant Gujarat 2011.
• While home grown small and medium businesses and industrialists are facing a host of problems, a selected coterie of big industrialists are being blatantly favoured in the name of Vibrant Gujarat. Rate of success of big industrialists in Vibrant Gujarat is only 5.10 %.
• Three industrialists are given away 5000 hectare of land in the last three years.
• In the last three years favoured industrialists have been given 111572319.57 Sq Mts of land at throw away price.
• There is steep rise in the number of educated unemployed. There are eight lakh educated unemployed registered.

Gujarat’s Leader of Opposition, Shaktisinh Gohil has demanded a formation of a Joint Legislative Committee (JLC) to probe into various irregularities, corruption and wrong doings in Vibrant Gujarat. Gohil asserted that Congress was all for the development of Gujarat. But, as a responsible political party, it cannot be a mute spectator to the very well organized activities to give away valuable property and resources of Gujarat to select few in the misleading guise of development of Gujarat.  Development should be all inclusive. Why are Small and Medium businessmen and enterprises and industrialists being ignored and a selected coteries being given away valuable land and other facilities at a throw away price even when official data of Gujarat government suggests that the actual realization of big projects following big promises in Vibrant Gujarat summit 2009 has been a mere 5.10 %.

Property worth billions has been given to some selected industrialists, he said. There is no public auction or transparent method while giving this land. On the other hand, Gohil said, small and medium industry is not given any facility. It is a known fact that many small and medium industries are crushed in all kind of problems. In the last three years favoured industrialists have been given 111572319.57 Sq Mts of land at throw away price. This was public land. But nothing has been given to landless farmers, small agariyas or people asking lands for gochar. On the other hand, the industrialists were minting money selling the land they got from government almost free. Big projects make big noise and walk away with big favours but their realization rate is dismissal. Big project proposals in 2009 Vibrant Gujarat summit was 12,25,357.99     ie Rs 12.25 lakh crore but out of this real investment came in only of Rs  62,522.27 crore  which is jut 5.10 % of what they had promised.

MOUs signed during Vibrant Gujarat remain on paper only. There is negligible investment from these MOUs. Gujarat was number one in investment in 1992. Now it is lagging behind many states, Gohil said. There are innumerable instances when MOUs of huge amounts have been signed, but there is no investment coming to Gujarat.He gave number of examples:

v     Hindustan Construction Company had signed a Rs 40,000 crore MOU for water city near Dholera. The company has not even visited the site.

v     Similarly, Universal Success Enterprise signed a memorandum of Rs one lakh crore for setting up township, a power plant of 1, 0000 MW and a port. But nothing is known about its progress.

v     Bhatia group had signed MOU of Rs 30,000 crore for setting up nano city. But nothing has moved in this case.

v     It was decided to set up vital innovation city near Valsad at a cost of Rs. 11,500 crore. It was declared that it will become hum of making auto parts and a Korean company would join the project. It is learnt that the project had been dropped.

A status report of all MOUs signed should be made public

Government declares a project successful if there is an investment of Rs five lakh in a project of Rs.5,000 crore. It says that investment of Rs 5,000 crore has come. Even if the state had got ten per cent of the promised investment, it would have wiped off all unemployment from Gujarat. Government is misleading people by giving false figures.  There is steep rise in the number of educated unemployed, he said.There were 55,000 unemployed in 1990 in the state. The figure has increased to 2,22,000 in 2008, he said. During this period, the number of unemployed engineers has increased from 4085 to over 10,000. The number of educated unemployed has increased by 2.5 lakh, Gohil said.

Quoting from questions from Assembly, he said that in reply to question number 15053 government had said that out of 8888 projects signed only 737 were commissioned. In the name of vibrant government was going for undue publicity. In Vibrant 2009, government spent Rs 691 crore after hoardings besides millions on other publicity.The government should have given this money to small and medium businesses. It is sad that the information department in Gujarat has over 700 staffers but still private PR agencies and planners are given huge margins and work for the event. Information Department and government staff is not used.

Places where no such vibrant event is held, investment is more than Gujarat, he said. Three industrialists are given away 5000 hectare of land in the last three years. Congress was not against development of Gujarat. But it should not be limited to handful industrialists. Thousands of small and medium business should benefit from it. He said that he had provided information he had got from government records. Government had made big announcements of Rs305 crore investment from DLF IT SEZ in Gandhinagar. In reality, the project has been denotified in June 2, 2009 and nothing is coming to the state.

The debt of the state should decrease if it is progressing really. However, the negligible debt at the time of the take over by this government has increased to 1,17,000 crore. Even CAG has taken serious note of the rising debt of Gujarat, he said. Instead of providing balanced development of Gujarat Vibrant meet is further widening the gap between riches and poor. Some are creating wealth in abundance while middle call people were pushed to stiffer times. It has lead to a situation that a person living in Ahmedabad or any other major city can not have his own house. A man in Rajkot killed his son saying that he was not able to bring him up. Farmers are facing great problems. But the government is not worried about all this.

If the government still thinks that the Vibrant Summits had no corruption and they brought all round development of Gujarat then it should accept Congress demand for JLP. BJP did not allow Parliament to function for its demand of JCP, it should accept the demand for JLP if it has any ethical and moral values, Gohil said.

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