Congress demands probe into Amit Shah’s son business
AMN / New Delhi
NEW DELHI: BJP today termed as “false, derogatory and malicious” an article on news website “The Wire” alleging that party chief Amit Shah’s son Jay used his father’s political position to make business gains and announced that the latter will be filing a civil and criminal defamation case claiming damages of Rs 100 Crore in Ahmedabad court against the author and the publisher.
On behalf of the BJP, senior union minister Piyush Goyal said that Jay Shah’s companies are legitimate and acquired loans transparently and paid commercial rates of interest for them. Jay Shah has said he will sue The Wire for Rs. 100 crore.
The allegation of defalcation and garnering unprecedented profits in recent years by an Ahmedabad-based company owned by BJP chief Amit Shah’s son Jay has turned into a major political row with Congress on Sunday demanding actions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi while the BJP rubbishing the charges.
Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Sunday asked if Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be open to calling for an investigation of Jay Amitbhai Shah, son of Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, after a news report revealed his company had a huge spike in revenues the year after Modi came to power. A report in the Wire details the growth of Jay Shah’s company, Temple Enterprise Private Ltd, from revenues of Rs 50,000 in 2014-’15 to Rs 80.5 crore in 2015-’16. The report also reveals a number of loans received by companies connected to Jay Shah, based on documents filed with the Registrar of Companies.
Mr Amit Shah’s son Jay Shah said all his businesses were “legitimate” and he announced that he would file criminal defamation suits against the wesbite owner, editor and also the journalist.
The Congress charge against the BJP leadership was led by none other than party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who also linked the episode – as surfaced in an article on a website ‘The Wire’ – to Mr Modi’s much talked about demonetisation move.
“We finally found the only beneficiary of Demonetisation. It’s not the RBI, the poor or the farmers.
Jay Amit Shah issued a statement stating that his businesses are “fully legitimate and conducted in a lawful manner on commercial lines”. He claims that he took the loans for his business from NBFC on purely commercial terms strictly in accordance with law. He maintains that he had mortgaged the family property to get the loans and has paid back in time and with interest.
“I have decided to prosecute the author, editor(s) and the owner(s) of the aforesaid news website for criminal defamation and sue them for an amount of Rs 100 Crore,” Jay said.
Goyal said Jay’s privacy rights have been infringed. He further said that in commodities business- which Jay had engaged in- the turnover figures are always very high. Here the profits made were not big.
The union minister said the article’s contention that Jay’s business made profits over 16,000 times was “sensationalism”.