The Karnataka government’s decision to reschedule the Global Investor's Meet, which was initially scheduled to be held from November 23-25, by four months to February 3-5, 2016 has raised eyebrows.
Though the government has maintained that the decision to reschedule GIM was due to severe droughts that had affected many districts in the state, there is criticism that the government was using drought as an excuse, but the real reason was unpreparedness.
Karnataka had renamed its Global Investors Meet to ‘Invest Karnataka 2015’, but decided to reschedule the event as 136 out of 176 taluks in the state have been affected by drought.
"Drought is a reason given on record, but the state is not well prepared for the meet. They want to rope in more investors and countries," a senior bureaucrat told TNM.
Minister of large and medium scale industries, R V Deshpande told TNM that no matter what critics and opposition said, the decision was one that reflected how responsible the government was.
“It would not look nice to have the Global investors meet when there is a severe drought in the state. People in affected districts will feel that we are ignoring them, and this will only increase their agitation," he said.
When asked whether the state was ill-prepared for GIM and had been unable to attract too many high-profile investors, he said, “We already have a list of investors ready to participate. We have also decided our knowledge and media partners. Soon, I will make public the amount that was spent by the BJP during the GIM they organized,” he said.
The BJP government had organized investors meet in 2010 and 2012.