Chennai, Feb 5 (PTI) The old relationship that was there between Tamil Nadu and the Northeast from the Brahmaputra river to the Coromandel Coast should be awakened, Union Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia said here on Wednesday.
The Minister for Communications and Development of North Eastern Region, inviting industry leaders from Tamil Nadu to invest in the Northeastern states, said tremendous opportunities were available for investments in various sectors in the Northeastern region.
Referring to the recent establishment of a semiconductor facility in Assam which has been set up at an outlay of Rs 40,000 crore, he said that itself an opportunity for entrepreneurs from Chennai and Tamil Nadu to make investments in that sector.
"We already have a new semi-conductor fab (facility) coming up in Assam at an almost Rs 40,000 crore investment, that itself an opportunity for Chennai (entrepreneurs) to look at in terms of setting up of an ancillaries unit in the Northeast. Take advantage of the location of the semiconductor fab as well", he said.
Scindia was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the two day of the Northeast Investors Summit Chennai Roadshow held in the city.
Elucidating his point, Scindia said there has been a tremendous amount of interest from the industry community during the two day event in the city for making investments in the Northeastern region.
"A lot of people have come forward with MoUs and Letter of Intents, to be a part of this (Northeast growth) journey", he said.
Paying rich encomiums to Chennai, he said, the city has been a beacon in terms of growth, prosperity over the years. "Be it the Old Mahabalipuram Road or the Sriperumbudur industrial belt, Chennai is the new Detroit," he said, and added that the 5G and 6G testbeds are also established at the IIT Madras here.
The Department of Telecommunications is funding a large scale 5G testbed project to encourage Indian startups and the industry to take an early lead in 5G. The goal of the project is to build a test bed that closely resembles a real-world 5G deployment.
"The old relationship between Tamil Nadu and the Northeast from the Brahmaputra river trade used to occur till the Coromandel coast (in the past). So, it is time to awaken those old relationships once again...," he said.
On the Northeast Roadshow, he said the Ministry of the Development of North Eastern Region has been holding such events across multiple cities over the last three months.
"We have tremendous potential on the one side in the Northeast across infrastructure, logistics, agriculture, floriculture, tourism, information technology, engineering, health and on the other hand, Chennai in many ways is a success story. And therefore, we are here to engage with investors in Chennai to come and be a part of this story in the Northeast," he said.
"Chennai is famous for its Ashtalakshmi temple in the city and similarly, the Northeastern states are the Ashtalakshmi states of the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given huge impetus to the Northeastern states where the Government of India has invested almost Rs 5 lakh crore over the last 10 years," he said.
The initiatives like Northeast Roadshow would herald a new paradigm in the development of the Northeastern states, he added. PTI VIJ VIJ KH