Bengal opposition parties demand white paper on business proposals

West Bengal's opposition parties - the Congress, BJP and CPI-M - on Tuesday demanded "white paper" from the Mamata Banerjee government on the number of actual fructified proposals that the state had received in earlier business summits.

Meanwhile, inaugurating the fourth edition of Bengal Global Business Summit at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre, Banerjee on Tuesday made a passionate appeal to investors to invest in the state.

However, the opposition described the Trinamool Congress government's effort of organising the business summit every year to woo investors in the state as "waste of public money".

State Congress President Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said: "The state government has never given a complete report on how many proposals have fructified from the previous business summit. The state government tries to fool everyone in the name of business summits."

Had the state managed to fructify even 50 per cent of the earlier proposals, there would not have been so much unemployment in the state, he said.

Leader of Opposition in the Assembly and Congress leader Abdul Mannan said these business summits are nothing but a "complete waste of public money".

Echoing Mannan, senior CPI-M leader and Left Front legislative party leader Sujan Chakraborty demanded that the state government should publish a "white paper" on the how the proposals have actually been fructified in the state.

West Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh said these business summits are "attempts to fool the masses" and only organised to derive political gains.

--IANS

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