UP CM Yogi covets biz, Bollywood and big bucks from Mumbai

Mumbai: Taking a break from the farmers' agitation in north, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath arrives here late Dec. 1 for a mega-shopping blitzkrieg in the country's commercial and entertainment capital on Tuesday.

On his second trip in three years, the CM will specifically eye big money, big biz and big glamour as his take-aways, presenting a brand-new face for UP as an 'investor-friendly' state.

Yogi, 48, has a packed diary with engagements that include India's leading industrialists, bankers, fin-wizards and of course, Bollywood personalities, advance teams of officials inform.

Yogi hopes to herald a new era for UP by ringing the bell at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) for the prestigious listing of bonds of Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) on Wednesday.

It is the first civic body of UP and the first city in north India to issue bonds, with municipalities of other cities like Agra, Varanasi and Kanpur likely to follow in the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state.

The LMC's Rs.200-crore pre-Diwali 10-year bond issue for 8.50 percent interest was oversubscribed 4.5 times, indicating India Inc. has viewed it credibly and given a 'Thumbs Up' to Yogi's development-oriented politics, as he prepares for Assembly elections after 15 months.

At his meetings with the dark-suited movers and shakers of business and Bollywood, the saffron-clad Yogi will enlighten them on the conducive atmosphere in UP, Ease of Doing Business by simplifying policies with a single-window for most clearances, ample manpower with necessary infrastructure and of course, a good law-and-order situation.

Putting their best boot forward, officials explain how, under Yogi's rule, UP has transformed in terms of infra, highways-expressways, air links, the proposed Film City near NOIDA, the Defence Corridor, developmental projects in the interiors like Poorvanchal or Bundelkhand, and the upcoming Grand Temple of Lord Ram in Ayodhya which will give a mega-boost to tourism in the state.

They said during the Corona pandemic, over four dozen Indian and foreign companies have come to invest around Rs.45,000-crores, and the state has extended bank loans of Rs.20,000-crore to over half-a-million MSMEs.

Handling the stupendous task of nearly five million jobless migrants who trooped back home to UP during the pandemic, the state helped rehabilitate them with Rs.1000-each ration kits, maintenance allowances and around half of them were given local employment.

The ruling Maharashtra Congress has slammed Yogi's Mumbai trip as a cunning ploy to induce "flight of capital" from Maharashtra by intimidating business and film personalities.

"This was done by the BJP in Gujarat since 2014… Yogi made efforts to discredit Maharashtra and Bollywood in the wake of actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Now, he will create fear in Mumbai to force businessmen and Bollywood to invest in UP," Congress state Spokesperson Sachin Sawant said.

Sawant advised Yogi that instead of creating panic among entrepreneurs in an advanced state like Maharashtra, UP must first tackle the growing atrocities on women, minorities, the rapes in broad daylight, an atmosphere of hatred, etc, before talking of progress.

Tomorrow, Yogi will meet and greet the head honchos like N. Chandrasekaran of Tata Sons, S. N. Subramaniam of Larsen & Toubro, Sukaran Singh of Tata Advanced Systems, Ashish Rajvansh of Adani Defence, Rajat Gupta of Ashok Leyland Grop, Harshvardhan of Tata Defence Technology, Niranjan Hiranandani of Hiranandani Group, Baba Kalyani of Bharat Force, Suprakash Chaudhary of Simmons, Vikas Jain of Capital Services, Sanjay Nair of KKR Ltd, Jaspal Bindra Centrum Capital Ltd, T S Darbari of Texmaco Defence Systems, among others.

The Bollywood personalities who will come-a-calling include Subhash Ghai, Rajkumar Santoshi, Bonnie Kapoor, Bhushan Kumar, Jatin Sethi, Rahul Mitra, Neeraj Pathak, Randeep Hooda, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Jimmy Shergill, et al.

Sources say the UP CM is likely to dine with actor Akshay Kumar on Tuesday night.

On his first trip after taking over as CM, Yogi had visited Mumbai in Dec. 2017 to invite India Inc. for the Feb. 2018 investment summit in Lucknow, which netted MoUs worth over Rs.4.50 lakh-crores of which almost half have already materialized on the ground.