Maran blames Jaya for TN losing Fab project

Union communications and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran today made a scathing attack on former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa for opting out of the race for the Fab City project at a very early stage.

"I spoke about Tamil Nadu losing over $3 billion investments due to Jayalalithaa's attitude towards the project almost at every public meeting during the recent elections in that state. She refused to offer any infrastructure support to the project when SemIndia representatives first met her. On top of it, an industry secretary in her government went to the extent of asking them how much donation they would give to the ruling party per each acre of land the state government would allot to the project," alleged Maran.

Lauding the efforts of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy in bringing the Fab project to Hyderabad when it was a close call from competitors like Karnataka, Maran said in a lighter vein that it would have been difficult for YSR to bag the project had M Karunanidhi been the chief minister of Tamil Nadu at that time.

"Now the project is in your hands. I hope the state government will carefully nurture and promote the semiconductor industry here as the project requires reinvestment every three years for technology upgradation among other things," the Union minister told the Andhra chief minister.

Maran said that the Centre's emphasis was not only to encourage semiconductor and other high-tech industries but also the electronics/IT hardware manufacturing industry in the country, which, according to him, was passing through a critical phase as a result of the implementation of IT agreements and the zero duty regime.