Amit Mitra, the principal chief adviser to the chief minister Mamata Banerjee, has defended with vigour the record of the Bengal Global Business Summit in attracting investments in the wake of criticism levelled by governor Jagdeep Dhankhar.
Citing a letter written by Mitra to the governor a year ago, providing data on investment offers, projects under implementation and employment generation, the former finance minister sought to call out Dhankhar who has demanded a white paper on the business summit.
“It is shocking that he seeks response when I had officially responded with a 4-page letter on Summits, giving data on investment offers UNDER IMPLEMENTATION, EMPLOYMENT generation etc, (read letter below). Is he suffering from AMNESIA & needs HELP or is it a Machiavellian omission?” Mitra posted on Twitter.
Mitra had written in the letter to Dhankhar that Rs 12,32,603 crore worth of proposals has been received by the state from multiple editions of the Bengal Global Business Summit from 2015 to 2019.
“You would be happy to know that between BGBS 2015 and BGBS 2018, 50.27 per cent of the proposals went into the implementation mode. For BGBS 2019, already Rs 71,646 crore is under implementation. The employment generated through these investments is to the tune of 28 lakh already,” Mitra wrote to Dhankhar on September 24, 2020.
Mitra was responding to the tweets of Dhankhar on Tuesday, a day after the governor appeared to bury a long-standing hatchet with the state government during a meet-and-greet programme attended by the chief minister.
At that event, Mamata had sought Dhankhar’s support to make the next edition of the summit, scheduled from April 20 to 21, a success. The governor had responded that “there is only one way, togetherness”.
The very next day Dhankhar resumed his criticism of the government, prompting the response from Mitra.
A Trinamul source said: “The governor must have been ticked off by the BJP leadership after he agreed to the chief minister’s proposal and promised all help to make the business summit a success.”
