Mumbai: The Congress has asked chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to remove Union minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha from the post of chairman of the Mumbai International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) task force. Mr Sinha has been named in the so-called Paradise Papers, which pertain to the stashing of unaccounted wealth in tax havens. The state had appointed Mr Sinha in IFSC in December 2015, at a time when he was minister of state for finance.
Stating that his party would soon be sending letters to the chief minister to demand the removal of Mr Sinha, Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said, “Sinha has been named in the Paradise Papers controversy. The Maharashtra government should remove him from IFSC task force immediately.”
Asked about the allegations, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis did not make an official comment.
Mr Fadnavis has been pushing for a ‘fintec’ (financial technology) hub in Bandra Kurla Complex. (BKC). He had appointed a high power committee under chairmanship of YES Bank managing director and chief executive officer Rana Kapoor.
The Maharashtra government had constituted the task force in December 2015 under the chairmanship of Mr Sinha and MP Poonam Mahajan was named as vice chairperson.
However, the task force didn’t have an opportunity to meet, as Mr Sinha was given the civil aviation portfolio last year.
The Centre had turned down the state government’s proposal to have the IFSC sanctioned as a financial SEZ. As per norms, 50 hectares of land required for a project to be sanctioned as an SEZ. But only 38 hectares of land is available at the site of the project at BKC. The state government had offered extra FSI, but the proposal was turned down by Centre. It has been alleged that the Centre isn’t relaxing land the norms because if the IFSC is developed at BKC, It will compete with the Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT), the dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that is being developed in Gujarat.
