Bengal CM slights Ford, Vedic village goes to MP

With help from Bengal nowhere in sight, Alfred Ford has decided to shift his Vedic village to Madhya Pradesh. What Mayapur will be left with...

With help from Bengal nowhere in sight, Alfred Ford has decided to shift his Vedic village to Madhya Pradesh. What Mayapur will be left with is a downscaled version of the proposed Rs 600-cr project.

Ford had been camping in Kolkata over the past few days but Writers’ Buildings repeatedly turned down requests for a meeting. With Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya refusing to meet him yet again this week, Ford decided to do without government ‘‘involvement’’ and go ahead with a Vedic village on a very small scale at Mayapur. ‘‘The Chief Minister is just not interested. All we had asked the government to do is sanction 400 acres. That has not happened in two years. We will start with, maybe, 25 acres on our own,’’ Ford’s representative in India, Sudipto Mukherjee, told The Indian Express.

Ford, who is in Mayapur at the moment, will stop over in Kolkata on Saturday to catch a flight to the US. Mukherjee said Ford had held successful meetings with Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and would build a ski village there.

Story continues below this ad

And, what Bengal lost in terms of investment, will go to Madhya Pradesh. Former CM Uma Bharati had bagged a Rs 300-crore tourism project from Ford, the second largest in the country after Mayapur.

Bhattacharya, on the other hand, had refused Ford audience even last year when he was here to commit investment worth Rs 600 crore. ‘‘In fact, the Madhya Pradesh government is offering us free land for this project,’’ Bhakticharan Swami, a member of ISKCON in charge of the project, said. The MP government and ISKCON have already identified a plot in Ujjain, on the banks of the Narmada.

Industries Minister Nirupam Sen said he was ‘‘not aware’’ of Ford being turned away. ‘‘I don’t think they had approached our department; we have always welcomed investment with open arms,’’ Sen added.

In Odisha, Modi mounts ‘loot tantra-vs-bachat utsav’ attack on Congress over GST

India2 hr ago

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday hailed the revised Goods and Services Tax (GST) structures, saying the era of “double bachat (saving) and double kamai (income)” has arrived under the Bharatiya Janata Party rule. Addressing the ' Namo Yuva Samabesh' in Jharsuguda, Modi accused the Congress of indulging in “loot tantra (tactics)” while in power.

View all shorts

Live Blog

PHOTOS