Biz summit: Ex-Bengal finance minister denies governor's claim

Former West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra on Wednesday rejected Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar's accusation that he had not responded to queries on investments proposed in five editions of Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS), saying he had detailed the information sought in a letter to Raj Bhavan last year.

Mitra, who was on Tuesday appointed as the principal chief advisor to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee after he relinquished the finance department last week, also posted that letter on Twitter.

He tweeted that a day after supporting the CM's plan of holding the next BGBS in April 2022, the governor has spewed ''venom'' on social media on the business summits.

''It is shocking that he seeks response when I had officially responded with a 4 page letter on Summits, giving data on investment offers UNDER IMPLEMENTATION, EMPLOYMENT generation etc,'' Mitra said in a tweet.

''Is he suffering from AMNESIA & needs HELP or is it a Machiavellian omission?'' Mitra asked. Dhankhar on Tuesday called upon the Mamata Banerjee government to come out with a white paper on BGBS with details of investments attracted through those programmes, and expressed concern at the alleged lack of response from the then state finance minister on the information sought by him in August last year. ` He had attached a copy of his letter to the chief minister dated August 25, 2020, along with his tweet.

Mitra too posted a copy of his four-page letter written on September 24, 2020, in reply to the governor's queries. In that letter, he had claimed that the state had received proposals worth over Rs 12.32 lakh crore at the business summits between 2015 and 2019 and had generated 28 lakh jobs. The former finance minister described the governor’s tweet on business summits as ''a classic case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde''.

The two names, the two alter egos of the main character in the 1886 book by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, have become over the years shorthand for contradictory behaviour.

Claiming that Dhankhar had a day before strongly supported the chief minister's plan of next summit and that he had said that he will leave nothing undone and talked of ”togetherness”, Mitra said, ''within 24 hours he tweets venom on Summits, by putting out a year old letter to CM & FM,(me)!'' The governor on Tuesday alleged that ground reality belies the claims of their ''resounding success'' of five editions of BGBS.

The Mamata Banerjee administration has been organising BGBS since 2015 to attract investments to the state.

The chief minister had said in the Assembly last year that 50 per cent of the investment proposals that were received in the five editions of BGBS are already in the process of implementation.

The last business summit was held in February 2019. During that edition, Banerjee had announced that it would be a biennial affair.