Munda (top), Koda

Ranchi, June 23: If the mountain does not come to Munda, Munda will go to the mountain.

It is now official. Chief minister Arjun Munda will leave next month for his maiden trip abroad. Details are still being worked out but what is certain is a visit to London to meet Munda?s ?friend-in-need?, steel baron Lakshmi Niwas Mittal.

The chief minister today claimed that he would attend an investors? meet in Europe and added that L.N. Mittal had assured to use his own contacts to make the meeting a success.

?It is not possible for all these investors to visit Jharkhand and survey the prospects,? said Munda today, ?That?s why I decided to visit Europe and meet them together,? said the chief minister.

According to sources in the chief minister?s secretariat, the business trip will take Munda and his team to UK, possibly a few European countries and then to Canada. Asked for a confirmation, the chief minister was evasive. ?I cannot provide details now,? he said, ?But all I can say is that if I succeed in my mission, Jharkhand will be setting a unique record of its kind.?

These days Munda seldom stops talking about Lakshmi Mittal. Today, too, he reiterated that he is in regular touch with the steel Czar. ?He is taking the project in Jharkhand very seriously,? the chief minister gushed.

There is a lot of scepticism already about Munda?s foreign trip, with critics refusing to see it as anything more than a junket abroad. They point out that the first chief minister, Babulal Marandi, had also been to Malyasia, Singapore and Thailand, ostensibly in search of investors. But nothing came off. Then Bihar chief minister Laloo Yadav, too, had gone abroad to the United States to woo foreign capital, they recalled.

Critics believe that the chief minister is putting the cart before the horse. Investors will come when there is infrastructure, better communication and improved facilities, they point out.

With the chief minister?s secretariat keeping the trip in a veil of secrecy, nobody appears to know who or how many people would accompany him. Even mines and geology minister Madhu Koda has apparently not been taken into confidence.

Koda, anxious to go on his first foreign trip, believes he deserves to be included in the entourage as most of the prospective investors are likely to be interested in mining. ?Surely I have a solid chance of making it?? asked the excited minister innocently.

Koda confessed he has been trying very hard to find out the details about the trip. But bureaucrats have been most unhelpful so far. Since the chief minister holds the industry and energy portfolios, argued Koda, he is logically the only other minister who should be included in the team.

But the chief minister has not spoken to him about the trip so far, he added dejectedly, and the officials too are not telling him anything.