Indian politicians reached out to Tesla founder Elon Musk over Twitter in bids to lure the electric vehicle giant to set up production in their provinces, Bloomberg reported.
Local leaders from at least five Indian states — Telangana in the south, Maharashtra in the west, Punjab in the north, West Bengal in the east, and Tamil Nadu in the south — urged the carmaker to set up shop in their regions over the weekend.
Musk and the Indian government — led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — have been in talks for at least three years over bringing a factory to the Asian country, but have been at loggerheads over import duties.
Musk has insisted India must slash import duties of as much as 100 percent to allow the carmaker to establish a market.
But the states — all ruled by parties opposed to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — stressed the high quality of their local infrastructure, sustainability and a streamlined approval process to entice the billionaire.
“Drop here, we in West Bengal have the best infrastructure & our leader @MamataOfficial has got the vision. Bengal means Business,” Bloomberg reported, said a tweet by Ghulam Rabbani, West Bengal’s minister for minority affairs and Madrassah education to Musk.
A tweet by Musk replied that the firm was “still working through a lot of challenges with the government.”
Red tape, land acquisition, and labor rights are a challenge for any firm that wants to open a plant in India, the news outlet reported.
India is the world’s fourth-largest car market in the world with a population of more than 1.3 billion people.
