Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma has accused BJP’s Prime Ministerial Candidate Narendra Modi of wrongly attributing a private report on performance of various States to his Ministry.
He also said that Modi was “manipulating and misrepresenting” the contents to justify handing out of land in Gujarat to some industrialists at throwaway prices.
“He (Narendra Modi) has tried to mislead voters on polling day. The Election Commission’s notice will be drawn to it,” Sharma said while addressing a press conference.
Modi, on Tuesday, cited bits pulled out of a report on ‘Best practices to improve business environment across India’ compiled by Accenture and put up on the Industry Ministry’s website to exonerate himself from charges of misallocation of land.
The report identified land-related interventions in Gujarat and its implementation of e-governance in pollution control as a model for other States to follow.
“The model followed by Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation oversees and ensures reduction in complexity across all processes in getting land,” the report said, adding that Andhra Pradesh and Haryana also did the same.
Modi challenged Sharma to comment on the report which he said had come out under the “auspices of his own ministry”.
Rejecting the suggestion that the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had come out with the report, Sharma said that the report compiled by Accenture ranked States on 14 parameters and Gujarat scored in just two of the parameters.
The Minister further said that the State (Gujarat) was lauded for allotting land online, which did not mean that land was not given to some industrialists at “throwaway prices’’.
The Gujarat Government is trying to manipulate the contents of the report and use it as a fig leave to cover his wrongdoings, Sharma added.
He pointed out that Rajasthan had done well on maximum parameters, and Maharashtra, West Bengal, Karnataka and Bihar also took the top slot in a number of parameters.