Speaking to The Quint’s Editorial Director Sanjay Pugalia, Chairperson of Indian Overseas Congress Sam Pitroda opined that PM Narendra Modi is at fault for the failure of GIFT City project, “one of his biggest failures”.
“When Modi ji was the chief minister of Gujarat, one project in particular was the subject of several heated debates, which they called the GIFT city (Gujarat International Finance Tech City). He (Modi) was beating drums over it. Discussions were held on it during Vibrant Gujarat. Huge slide shows were prepared, big PowerPoint presentations were made, brochures were published, etc. What was all that?Sam Pitroda, Chairperson of Indian Overseas Congress
Sam Pitroda claimed that there were “talks of signing MoUs worth Rs 5,000 to Rs 50,000 crore, but everything was a lie,”.
“Look at the project today, there are merely two buildings standing there. The land was taken away from poor farmers. There is no one in those buildings today. Who were the partners? IL&FS, which was also bankrupt. Not a single TV channel talked about it. Why? Because if they had talked about it the government would have stopped them,” he said.
He further said that during Manmohan Singh's government, the Congress headed the Knowledge Commission.
“We headed the Innovation Council too. We started the project, 'Connectivity to Panchayat'. You can ask why we didn't tell this to the people. You can also ask why we didn't spend the public's money for PR. We don't do that. We do our work. And the work speaks for itself,” he said.
Watch the full video here.
(This was originally post on Quint Hindi)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)