Congress govt kept country poor to perpetuate dynastic rule: Tejasvi Surya

New Delhi: BJP member Tejasvi Surya on Wednesday said in Lok Sabha that the "mindless obsession" of successive Congress governments with socialism had kept the country poor as a part of a design to continue the dynastic rule.

Participating in the discussion on the general budget, Surya said before the advent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country was under to control of dynasts, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, who deliberately kept the country poor to perpetuate their rule.

"The reason why dynastic politics preferred socialism and kept a closed economy because they did not want challengers to come and challenge their throne," Surya, an MP from Bangalore South, said. The BJP member said the argument of increase in unemployment in the country put forth by the Opposition was "baseless and logicless". "If the size of the economy, if the number of unicorns has increased multiple times, if there are more investments, how can there be no employment generation," Surya said. He said the Congress party and its dynasty leaders were confusing their political unemployment as the unemployment of the country.

"Those who are hardworking, talented, meritorious, young people coming from modest backgrounds have enough number of opportunities," he argued. "If there is one person who is unemployed in this country, it is the prince of the Congress party, the dynast of the Congress party," Surya said. Referring to Rahul Gandhi's argument of two Indias, the BJP member said there were indeed two Indias -- one before the advent of Modi and another after 2014. Surya said before Modi, India had witnessed double-digit inflation, was dubbed as "fragile five", while after 2014 the country's economy was among the fastest-growing in the world.

NCP member Supriya Sule countered Surya on the issue of dynastic politics and sought to know the relation between him and Ravi Subramanya, a BJP MLA from Karnataka. She also named BJP members Pritam Munde, Poonam Mahajan, Heena Gavit, Raksha Khadse, Sujay Vikhe Patil, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan.

"A common thing I have with them is that we were all born in political families. I am very proud of being born into a political family. I am very proud of being born to my parents," Sule said.

She also listed business houses such as Wipro, Infosys, Kirloskars, Walchand Group, Kalyani Group, Poonawalla Group among others who built their businesses from a scratch before the emergence of Modi. Earlier, DMK member D K Kathir Anand said the Centre had discriminated against southern states while making budgetary allocations. Congress member M K Raghavan rejected Modi's criticism and said he was proud of the leadership provided by Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh. "We are not from tukde, tukde gang.

We belong to a great organisation called the Indian National Congress," he said. "Had the UPA government not enacted MGNREGA, we would have witnessed starvation deaths under your regime," Raghavan, a Lok Sabha member from Kozhikode, said. BJP member Heena Gavit termed the general budget as "all-inclusive", contending that the government had tried to address the needs of everyone from rural to urban areas.

JD(U) member Mahabali Singh said the budget would usher in a self-reliant India and wondered why the Opposition was critical of it. At the same time, he said India can emerge as a developed nation only if his home state Bihar develops and demanded enhanced allocation for the state.