RANCHI: Corporates like JSPL, Adani group, Vedanta and A V Birla group have committed nearly Rs 50,000 crore worth of fresh investments in Jharkhand as the state’s maiden investment summit ‘Momentum Jharkhand’ got off to a glittering start on Thursday.

Industry captains like Ratan Tata, interim chairman Tata Sons, Kumarmangalam Birla, chairman A V Birla group, Sashi Ruia, chairman Essar group, Navin Jindal, chairman JSPL, along with a six union ministers, including FM Arun Jaitley, power coal and mines minister Piyush Goyal, roads and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari, textiles minister Smriti Irani, urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu lent their weight to the event.

“The moment is now,” Ratan Tata told the gathering and observed that the time has come for Jharkhand to join and participate in the excitement of creating a new India.

Kumarmangalam Birla said he would invest Rs 5000 crore in the state out of which Rs 1500 crore has already been earmarked. He will send Rs 750 crore on a 2.2 million tone cement plant in Bokaro, the group’s first such unit in Jharkhand where it already operates several bauxite mines and an alumina unit under its flagship Hindalco Industries. A V Birla group will also set a 250 tonnes per day caustic soda unit at a cost of Rs 500 crore and invest Rs 1000 crore in adding new telecom infrastructure in the state, he added. The Vedanta group chairman Anil Agarwal said he would look at investments of around Rs 5000 crore, including a unit in iron & steel.

Rajesh Adani MD of Adani group said they will pump in Rs 15,000 crore in power projects in the state, while Adani Green Energy will put in another Rs 3,000 crore to set 500 MW of solar power projects in Jharkhand to create some 12,000 jobs over the next five years. In the mining sector, it is investing another Rs 700 crore to develop coal blocks at Jitpur, he said.

Navin Jindal of JSPL, which already invested Rs 3,000 crore and has a presence in the state through its 1.6 mtpa unit at Patratu near Ranchi, is now planning to expand it to 6 mt capacity. For this, the group is keen to put in another Rs 20,000 crore over the next five years.

Led by chief minister Raghubar Das and promoted by brand ambassador and Captain Cool M S Dhoni, the state officials have left no stone unturned to make the investor meet a success and the event seems to have created quite a buzz among investor circles. It now remains to be seen how much of that enthusiasm gets translated into real action on the ground.

One of the country’s youngest states, Jharkhand born in November 2000 and home of 40% of the country’s mineral wealth has always had great potential but failed to achieve much due to political instability, until about two years ago when the present regime came to power. The political stability coincides with the state attaining a certain maturity, finance minister Arun Jaitley commented during his address at the meet. This is likely to foster growth, he felt. As Raj Bala Verma, Jharkhand chief secretary aptly pointed out, this is clearly “an inflection point” in the state’s history which now wants to be among the frontrunners in terms of industrial development. On Thursday, the fledging state seemed to have taken its first tentative steps in that direction.