Congress slams Centre's move to shift Jagdishpur Paper Mills project to Maharashtra

NEW DELHI: The Congress party has slammed the Modi government’s plan to shift a proposed paper mill from the Gandhi family pocketborough of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh to Maharashtra, with its Vice-President Rahul Gandhi accusing the ruling BJP of practicing ‘politics of revenge’.

As Union Heavy Industries Minister Anant Geete confirmed the government’s plan reported by ETin its Friday edition to shift the proposed Jagdishpur Paper Mills to Ratnagiri in his home state, the Gandhi family scion, who is the MP for Amethi, was reported as saying that the Bharatiya Janata Party was shifting all projects out of Amethi.

"Whatever projects were there in Amethi, they are shifting them. I have said before that it is politics of revenge, and they are doing it," Gandhi was quoted as saying from Jaipur.

In April this year, the Congress had protested the scrapping of the Rs 200 crore Shaktiman Food Park project in Amethi.

In Delhi, a Congress party spokesperson sought to debunk the official explanation that the Rs 3,650 crore project was being shifted away from Amethi because no work had taken place on it since its clearance and problems with land availability.

"Well, if the paper mill is being sought to be shifted out of Amethi by the Centre by saying no work has been done on it, by the same logic, the Modi government will have to think about shifting the entire nation itself to somewhere else as nothing is happening anywhere since the Modi government took charge," Congress spokesperson Salman Khursheed said.

Two official sources and the member of parliament for Ratnagiri had told ET about the thinking in the government to shift the project out of Jagdishpur to Ratnagiri, which officials said offered land, raw material and better connectivity. On Friday, Geete, responding to queries triggered by the report in the ET, confirmed that the government was indeed "working in this direction".

"They (UPA Government) had decided (to set up the mill in Amethi) in 2007 but due to non-availability of land, nothing had moved in this direction… We are making efforts to set up the mill in Ratnagiri as land is available there. Plus, it has ample bamboo cultivation, highway, port, railway connectivity is there. We will have to approach the Cabinet again for approval to transfer the project to Ratnagiri," he said.

The Jagdishpur Paper Mill was reportedly a project championed by Rahul Gandhi and was fast forwarded by the UPA government in the final months of its term in office.



ET had reported last year how the proposal was pushed through cabinet in February with no note circulated to other ministries ahead of the meeting, contrary to usual practice. The note laying out the details of the project justified the investment on grounds that it would create 900 local jobs.

The cabinet clearance to this project had raised eyebrows in some quarters last year because the UPA government was essentially setting up a new public sector entity and stumping up debt and equity for it at a time it was resorting to widespread expenditure cuts to keep the fiscal deficit under control. What also didn’t help was the fact that Hindustan Paper, a sick state-run firm, was tasked with executing the project.