BJP from Karnataka Tejasvi Surya on Wednesday took on Rahul Gandhi’s assertions that there were two India’s and called his claim of unemployment in the country to be baseless.
He said the two India’s that Rahul Gandhi spoke about are actually India before Modi and India after Modi.
“Before Modi there was double digit inflation. Now we have single digit inflation. Before the size of India’s GDP was Rs 110 lakh crore. After Modi, the size of the GDP is Rs 230 lakh crore. Before Modi, India’s exports were Rs 2.85 lakh crore. After Modi, it is Rs 4.7 lakh crore,” Surya said adding that the Congress party’s mindless obsession with socialism had kept India poor.
Gandhi had earlier said in the house that Narendra Modi had created two India’s–one of the extremely rich and the other of the poor.
Surya said the India that the Congress ruled was the corrupt India. He also accused it of shackling entrepreneurship in India, which the Modi government had unleashed.
He said the opposition’s argument that there is increasing unemployment in the country is “baseless”.
“If the GDP has increased multiple times, if FDI has increased multiple times, if the number of unicorns have increased multiple times, how can there be no employment generation. The Congress party and their dynastic leaders are confusing their political unemployment as unemployment in the country. The hardworking and talented people have all the opportunities. The only unemployed person is the prince of the Congress party,” Surya said.
According to Surya, the country had witnessed an economic miracle in the last seven years under the leadership of Narendra Modi.
“The progress and the pace of reforms is unprecedented. The 1991 reforms are talked about often. But the 1991 budget was out of compulsion, not conviction. The government budgets are a result of conviction to usher in reforms,” he said.
Surya’s forceful speech was countered by NCP’s Supriya Sule who pointed out that Surya’s accusations against Congress of being dynastic were hypocritical since BJP was full of duansts.
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She asked if Surya could answer who is Ravi Subramnium, a BJP MLA from Karnataka, and if Surya is related to him.
“I am very proud of whose daughter I am. Pritam Munde, Poonam Mahajan, Heena Gavit, Raksha Khadse, Sujoy Vikhe Patil, Jyotiraditya Scindhia, Piyush Goyal Dhamendra Pradhan… the common thing we have is we were all born in political families,” she said.
She also said that Wipro, Cipla, Infosys, Kirloskar, Ambani, Bajaj, Poonawala, Dhoots are all companies which contributed to this country in the past 50 years. “Do not run down their contribution,” she said countering Surya’s comment that enterprenuership was shackled earlier.
On budget, Sule raised the issue of fiscal deficit targets set during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era at 3% being revised to 6.9% in the current budget. “Will the Rs 1 lakh crore given to the state to implement central schemes really help them,” She asked.
She also raised the issue of pending Rs 28,365 crore GST compensation of her state.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who was sitting in the house chose to reply immediately.
“The Rs 1 lakh crore given to states is over and above their borrowing limits. So it is not going affect their borrowing limits. There is no interest on this amount. The Centre is giving it for 50 years. The intention behind this is the states can use this amount to complete several of the projects that they want to. We are being supportive to the states,” Sitharaman said.
“As far as 6.9% deficit is concerned, after one and half years of the pandemic, the only calls I would get from everybody is spend sped. Fine, I am spending. It will show the results. And naturally you will breach the 3% target. So 6.9% is a responsible target,” she said.
Pradyot Bordoloi of the COngress reminded the house of the lakhs of diyas lit by the UP government in Ayodhya and how after the function was over, people were collecting mustard oil from them. “When Swamyji became CM, mustard oil was Rs 70 a litre, it is now Rs 250 a litre.Under the façade of pomp and gaiety around monumental structures and statues, actually lies the human cost of economic devastation in India,” he said.
He said the Modi government brought down GDP growth from 8% during the UPA era to 3.5% even before the pandemic hit. In the list of country’s whose economy went down during the pandemic, India was at 150th position, it was doing so poorly.
He said it was not Amrit Kaal but Rahu Kaal.
Mahabali Singh of JDU praised the government budget but asked for special status for BIhar.