NEW DELHI: Hitting back at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi for accusing the Narendra Modi Government of “politics of revenge” over the cancellation of a mega food park in his Amethi constituency, Union Minister for Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Monday said Rahul was trying to mislead people.
Kaur said Congress leaders must do their homework and should know why the food park was cancelled by the erstwhile UPA Government.
“It took Rahul Gandhi 10 months to realise that the food park project has been cancelled. He is misleading people. He is not serious about the food park,” she said in a scathing rebuttal.
Stating the sequence of events that led to the cancellation of the project, Kaur said the promoters had expressed its inability to pursue the project in the absence of natural gas, which the UPA government denied in December 2012. Kaur further said the Ministry of Food Processing Industries had granted approval for the food park in 2010 and the project had to come up in 24 months. Since nothing happened till 2012, the ministry issued a showcause notice to the promoters, Shaktiman Group.
Shakatiman Group wanted to have a captive power plant and wanted gas supply from the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, which rejected the request in 2012 itself.
The UPA Government had in March 2014 decided not to give an extension to the project. At a meeting in last June, the promoter had made clear that project wouldn’t be viable if it didn’t get gas at an administered price.