DK Suresh has no right to remain an MP, says BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad

PTI, Feb 3, 2024, 9:02 AM IST

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New Delhi: The BJP said on Friday that Congress leader D K Suresh has no right to remain an MP even for a minute, as it accused him of openly talking of breaking India, thus violating his oath of protecting the country’s unity and sovereignty.

‘Will the country’s unity and sovereignty be torn into shreds for political benefits,’ BJP leader and former law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told a press conference here, as he hit out at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and their INDIA bloc allies for maintaining a ‘conspicuous silence’ over his ‘shameful’ and ‘unconstitutional’ comments.

D K Suresh, the Lok Sabha MP from Bangalore Rural and the brother of Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, has stoked a row with his claims that injustice was being meted out to southern states in allocation of share in tax collection.

‘Our tax money is being distributed to north India, if we don’t condemn it there might arise a situation where we will have to demand for a separate nation,’ Suresh said on Thursday, commenting on the interim budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Prasad said that before contesting an election and after winning it, anyone takes oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the country’s unity and sovereignty. Karnataka is a proud part of India, he said.

‘He (D K Suresh) has committed a gross impropriety as an MP by openly talking breaking up India. It is a clear violation of the constitution’s main point of unity and integrity,’ he said.

In a swipe at Rahul Gandhi, who had led his party’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ earlier and is now spearheading the ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’, the BJP leader said he is supposedly working to unite the country but has not even disowned the comments of his party’s MP against the country’s integrity.

While Congress leaders regularly charge the BJP with violating the Constitution and ‘abuse’ Prime Minister Narendra Modi by calling him a dictator and alleging that he will not let elections take place in the future, they have maintained a conspicuous silence on such a comment by their MP against the Constitution, Prasad said.

Rejecting the MP’s charge of discrimination against sothern states, he said PM Modi recently inaugurated a Boeing facility in Karnataka, and the state has been given a tax share of over Rs 1.35 lakh-crore during 2014-19 against Rs 53,996 crore during 2009-14 when the Congress-led UPA was in power.

The Centre has allocated Rs 30,919 crore in 2019-20, Rs 24,273 crore in 2020-21, Prasad said, stressing that the allegation of ‘step-motherly’ treatment to Karnataka is unfounded.

But this is all secondary to Suresh’ violation of the Constitution, he asserted.

Replying to questions on political upheavals in Jharkhand, the BJP leader said the Congress has no right to a charge a government with violating principles of federalism as it dismissed many elected state governments when it was in power at the Centre.

Opposition leaders have criticised the arrest of Hemant Soren, who resigned as Jharkhand chief minister following the Enforcement Directorate’s action against him in a corruption case, and the ‘delay’ in the formation of the new government in the state.

Prasad noted that a new government was sworn in earlier in the day. He took a swipe at the ruling alliance in the state over its plans to shift the MLAs supporting it to Hyderabad.

The state governor followed the constitutional norms and has given 10 days to the government to prove its majority, he said.

The Congress has set a record in violating federalism and dismissing state governments unconstitutionally, he said.