Kolkata: A majority of industrial units that closed their shutters in West Bengal in the last ten years have relocated to Maharashtra, according to statistics available in the records of a Central organisation.
According to statistics available with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), since the financial year of 2011-12, the first fiscal under the current Trinamool Congress regime in West Bengal, till 2024-25, the last fiscal under the same regime, a total of 6,688 industrial units closed in West Bengal and shifted to other states.
The maximum exodus, according to the statistics of the same Central body, occurred during the last ten financial years, with the number being 4,751.
Fiscally, the maximum exodus occurred during 2016-17 and 2017-18, when a total of 1,945 industrial units closed their shutters in West Bengal and relocated to other states.
Now, departmental insiders said the maximum number of industrial units that closed in the state during the last ten years shifted to Maharashtra, with the figure being 1,308.
The other states where the industrial units shifted to include Uttar Pradesh at 879, Chhattisgarh at 511, and Gujarat at 423.
Economic and political observers feel that the figures on the states benefiting the most because of the exodus of industrial units in West Bengal provide interesting review materials.
According to them, all the states that benefited most because of this factor during the period under review are BJP-ruled states. Observers feel that the BJP can use these figures to project how the states ruled by them provide the right ambience to industrial units to relocate themselves there after being frustrated with any non-BJP-ruled state.
It had been a long-standing argument of both the BJP and the other opposition parties in West Bengal that the rampant extortion by the ruling Trinamool Congress is not only discouraging fresh investment proposals in the state but also promoting existing units in the state to shut their shutters and shift to other states.
At a political rally organised by the BJP’s West Bengal unit at the industrial township of Durgapur in West Burdwan district on July 18, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also stressed the issue of how extortions are discouraging investments in the state.
The Prime Minister, on that day, devoted substantial time in explaining how communal riots like the one in the minority-dominated Murshidabad district, which allegedly happened under the patronage of a section of Trinamool Congress leaders and individuals from the police administration, and the extortion rackets run by leaders of the ruling dispensation became the reasons why the industrialists are scared to invest in the state.
“In West Bengal, the police administration always acts in a biased manner in situations like that in Murshidabad. Because of extortion rackets run by the ruling Trinamool Congress leaders, no industrialist wants to invest in Bengal. Trinamool Congress has to go. Otherwise, everything in West Bengal will be in shambles,” the Prime Minister said.
(IANS)
